About Steven Gilyeart

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About Steven Gilyeart, JD

Leasing and Finance

Steven Gilyeart is an international attorney, government advisor, consultant, educator and businessman from Seattle, Washington, USA. He has an honors degree in law from the University of Texas, as well as an honors degree in economics from Oklahoma State University. He has been active in the leasing and finance fields in a number of capacities for more than 25 years.

As an attorney, he has represented leasing companies, banks, and other financial institutions in a variety of financial and other transactions and court proceedings. He is admitted to all courts, state and federal, in Washington, and to the United States Tax Court. He has a background in the world’s major legal traditions, including common law, civil law, modern socialist systems and some Islamic law.

As a government advisor, he has provided assistance to four of the five most populous countries in the world (along with a number of smaller ones) in the development of policy and legislation to create or enhance the equipment finance and leasing industry in the country, and the development of the SME sector. Usually working with the Central Bank, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Trade, Parliament, the President’s Office, Foreign Investment Office and high government agencies at the behest of the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, US Agency for International Development and other development institutions, he has provided policy advice and legislative draftsmanship covering commercial law, judicial procedures, tax (direct and indirect), accounting, banking supervision, foreign investment, customs, foreign exchange, business regulation, licensing, credit bureau information systems, SME development and other areas that might impact the country’s equipment finance, SME and economic development infrastructure.

Mr. Gilyeart is currently working on projects for China and Georgia. He has recently concluded leasing industry development projects for Albania, Macedonia (3^rd project), Ukraine and Nigeria. In the past three years, he has also completed similar projects in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Cambodia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Macedonia (2^nd project) and an update seminar for the People’s Republic of China. Previously, he has been involved with legislative and economic reform projects regarding the development of the leasing and capital asset finance industry in Romania, Croatia, Uzbekistan, Nicaragua and Macedonia. He has been the architect and draftsman of a complete legal framework (law, tax, accounting, licensing, regulatory and other policies, legislation, and regulations) that would allow for the emergence of an equipment finance and leasing industry in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos). (There had previously been no financial leasing industry in Lao.) He has advised the Republic of Poland on legal and tax reforms to enhance and increase the country’s financial leasing activity, and assisted the Russian Federation with its economic and legislative reforms, including advice respecting its proposed federal leasing law, tax and accounting policies, leasing company regulatory schemes, and other related matters. He similarly advised the People’s Republic of China respecting new leasing legislation and policies, the design of a credit bureau and development of a lease registry. In addition, he was an advisor to and a draftsman of a finance leasing law and regulatory structure for the leasing industry in the Socialist Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka, where he also reviewed the tax and accounting system for advisable change and developed a lease registration system and a national credit bureau. Previously, he was the draftsman of a leasing law and the designer of a personal property asset registration system for the Republic of Indonesia.

In the United States he has served as an advisor to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and was an active participant in the drafting of Article 2A—Leases, the article of the Uniform Commercial Code that covers leasing. He has also been involved with a number of pieces of leasing legislation in a number of US states.

As an educator, he has conducted seminars and training programs on a variety of leasing, finance, accounting, tax and law topics throughout the world. He is the author of The International Leasing Dictionary, published electronically at The International Leasing Resource. He is also the author of Chapter 3, The International Legal Infrastructure, Chapter 7, Indirect Tax, and co-author of Chapter 4, The International Regulatory Structure of International Leasing--The Complete Guide (Amembal & Associates, 2000), Chapter 19, Legal Issues, in Operating Leases--The Complete Guide (Amembal & Associates, 2000), Article 2A—Statutory Analysis, Equipment Leasing (ed. Wong, Matthew Bender 1995, 99), Chapter 18: Lease Documentation and Chapter 19: Legal Issues in The Handbook of Equipment Leasing (Amembal & Halladay, 1995) and dozens of articles for various publications in the leasing field.

Since 1981 he has made over a hundred presentations and conducted workshops and seminars for lessors, lessees, attorneys, accountants, and others involved in leasing, both in the United States and abroad, including a training seminar for the first indigenous people’s leasing company in Zimbabwe and an invited presentation at the ABD/OCED Workshop on SME Financing in Asia in Manila, the Philippines, in July, 2000, and continues to teach in-house programs for major lease companies, financial institutions and manufacturing companies with finance departments or financial subsidiaries.

Mr. Gilyeart has served as a registered lobbyist on behalf of the leasing industry and has participated in the enactment (and amendment) of numerous pieces of leasing legislation, both in the United States and abroad. He also serves as an arbitrator of commercial disputes.

He is a past member of the Board of Directors of the United Equipment Leasing Association (formerly WAEL), a past chairman of WAEL’s Legal Committee and Government Affairs Committee, and has served on a number of WAEL task forces, including its long-range strategic planning task force. He has served as the Chairman of the Lawyer’s Committee of the National Vehicle Leasing Association and has been actively involved with the Equipment Leasing Association (formerly "AAEL"), the Washington Association of Equipment Lessors, the Puget Sound Lessors’ Group and the international lease community.

Technology

Mr. Gilyeart was published in the computer technology field at the dawn of the PC era and retains active interests in that area as well. He is a long-standing member of the Association for Computing Machinery, and an active member of the WSA, IEEE Computer Society and American Mathematical Association. He was a charter member of the Virtual World Society, and a prior member of the Interactive Communication Society and Northwest Cyber Artists. In 2001, he presented an invited position paper on Online Privacy and Trust at the ACM-SIG CHI Conference in Seattle. In November of 1981, Interface Age published his prognostic article “The Paper Chase Meets the Chip”, which has proven correct regarding windows, e-mail and electronic document filing. He has been approved as a peer reviewer for Computing Reviews. He was an early member of The Well, an early web developer, and is still an occasional programmer.

Community Service

Mr. Gilyeart is currently a member of the US President’s Business Commission, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and the Northwest Entrepreneur’s Network. He has been a Member of the Seattle Mayor’s Small Business Task Force, the past president of the Denny Regrade Business Association (a local “chamber of commerce”), and has served on the boards of various community non-profit organizations. He has also served as a member or chairman of a variety of bar association committees and as Special District Counsel/investigator for the bar regarding allegations of unethical attorney conduct. Early in his legal career, he argued the Washington Supreme Court case that established the definition of death in Washington State.

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