Gale R. MellumGale practiced in Faegre & Benson's Corporate Group for more than 30 years, served as head of the Corporate Group for more than 10 years, and served on its Management Committee for 12 years. Gale has concentrated his practice in the representation of developing businesses, including general corporate counseling, various types of debt financings, private and public securities offerings, and mergers and acquisitions faced by such businesses as they develop.
Gale has advised on various corporate governance issues and counseled various Boards of Directors over the years including Steiger Tractor, Inc., Payless Cashways, Inc. and CIMA Labs, Inc., and has served as counsel to special committees of the Boards of BORN Information Services, Inc. and MTS Systems, Inc. Gale has also served as a director, secretary and board advisor to several businesses including The Tesseract Group, Inc., Excelsior-Henderson Motorcycle Manufacturing Company, Quali Tech Inc., and Lumineo International Inc.
Over the years he has guided many corporations through various stages of development including their public offerings, such as Payless Cashways, Inc., Steiger Tractor, Inc., Network Systems, Inc., Communications Systems, Inc., Detector Electronics Corporation, TGI Friday's Inc., FSI International, Inc., Regis Corporation, Country Lake Foods Inc. and Fourth Shift Corporation.
Gale has been lead counsel in many private placement financings of various securities. He helped Education Alternatives, Inc., Taylor Investment Corporation, FSI International, Inc., P.C. Scientific, Inc., Rosewood Corporation, Sandia Mortgage Corporation, Midcontinent Oil & Gas Corporation, Automotive Northern Warehouse, Inc., Harlem Globetrotters, Inc., Growth Environmental, Inc., Excelsior-Henderson Motorcycle Manufacturing Company, CIMA Labs, Inc. and Lumineo International, Inc. successfully complete private offerings of equity, debt or limited partnership interests.
Gale has also been primarily responsible for over 50 mergers and/or acquisitions of various sizes and structures, including the leveraged acquisitions of TGI Friday's Inc., Regis Corporation, UFE Incorporated and Hypro Corporation; acquisitions for Owatonna Tool Company, Quali Tech, Inc., Detector Electronics, The Tesseract Group, Inc., Lifetouch Inc. and UniSelect USA, Inc.; and the sale of Owatonna Tool Company, PSI NordicTrack Inc., Sun Country Airlines, Inc., The Creamette Company, Van Dale, Inc., Fargo Electronics, Inc.'s check reader and bar code printer businesses, Sandia Mortgage Corporation, United Mortgage Corporation, Meader Distributing Co., Hypro Corporation, Ehlert Publishing Company, Arcsmith, Inc., Siyeza, Inc., Fanball Interactive, LLC, Lindstrom Metric, Inc., Kimmes Construction, Inc. Gale has also guided the structuring of joint ventures for Oxford Development Corp. with Toronto-Dominion Bank, for Quali Tech Inc. with Inobio in France and Pan Americana in Brazil, for FSI International, Inc. with Mitsui in Japan and for Automotive Northern Warehouse Inc. with UniSelect Inc. of Canada, for Lumineo International, Inc. with KABE Engineering in Germany and for Range Systems with Mancom, Inc. of Canada.
Education and Professional Affiliations.
Gale received his undergraduate (B.A. 1964, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) and law (J.D. 1968, magna cum laude) degrees from the University of Minnesota and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Cornell University from 1964 to 1965. He has been a member of the Federal Securities Regulation Committee of the American Bar Association, the Securities Law Section of the Hennepin Bar Association and the Planning Committee of the Garrett Corporate and Securities Law Institute of Northwestern University School of Law.
