Gerard Willis

Gerard F. Willis is the Chairman of Operations Holdings, Inc. (dba/ HJ Magnolia USA Holdings), a multi-industry holding company for a variety of businesses including The Washington Times, the New Yorker Hotel, Manhattan Center, and Ocean Peace).  He was formerly President & CEO.

Before returning to the United States in 2022 from a 30-year career in Asia, he worked as a business leader, an attorney for a Wall Street law firm, a senior legal counsel for four fortune 100 corporations, and as managing director for a private equity firm, leading transactions during his time in Asia with an aggregate value of over 18 billion dollars.

Most recently he served as the first foreign Chairman in the 50-year history of the Tongil Group, a multi-industry family-owned Korean “Chaebol” (family founded conglomerate) with revenues equivalent to a U.S. Fortune 500 company.  Prior to that he was the Vice President & General Counsel, Asia Pacific, for Honeywell International, a diversified technology corporation operating through four divisions: Aerospace, Automation & Control Systems, Specialty Chemicals and Transportation Systems, with approximately 35,000 employees and U.S. $ 7 Billion of yearly revenues in the Asia Pacific region, representing 3X growth in Asia and 10x growth in China during his 18 years as its general counsel. He was a member of Board of Directors and Vice Chairman of the Audit Committee of Honeywell Automation India Ltd., Honeywell’s only publicly listed subsidiary.  He was chosen as one of “China’s Top 15 General Counsel for 2015” by Asian Legal Business, a Thomas Reuters publication, and named in Legal 500 as one of the “Most Influential Lawyers in China and Hong Kong, 2017”. The Financial Times of London in a pullout distributed to 2 million readers recognized his legal department of 80 plus attorneys as one of only 4 of Asia’s “Outstanding Legal Departments”, their highest category. Others in that category included Alibaba and Tencent. He served as an  Arbitrator (one of only 3 U.S. citizens) for the Shanghai International Arbitration Commission.

His work in Asia also included the role of chief counsel in Asia for El Paso Energy International, Enron Asia Pacific, and ARCO China, Inc.

He was a senior associate based in Los Angeles and Hong Kong for Milbank, Tween, Hadley & McCloy, a major Wall Street law firm where he specialized in M&A, capital markets and bank financing. He led several Asia “firsts”, including the first Asia company leveraged buy-out.

As Managing Director of Panda Group, Ltd., a private company with over $200 MM invested  in projects in Asia, he collaborated with company advisor the late Secretary of State General Alexander Haig in securing government approvals and successfully restructuring its largest project.

For eight years during the height of the Cold War he was the Managing Director of the Washington, DC based Freedom Leadership Foundation (est 1969),  a foreign policy foundation focussed on the East-West struggle, where he oganized conferences and symposia; lectured, published and edited a bi-weekly international affairs newspaper; produced two award-winning television documentaries which aired on local and cable networks and received the Medal of Honor from Valley Forge Freedom Foundation (contemporary recipients, Hon Warren Berger, Hon. Jean Kirkpatrick) and the annual award from the Council for Defense of Freedom(contemporary recipient New York Times  journalist Fox Butterfield).

He earned a JD from New York University School of Law; , a BA from Brown University;  and an MA from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs.

He has black belts in Shimgumdo (Korean sword) and Kendo (2nd Dan Japanese sword), and is a practitioner of Tai Qi Jian (Chinese sword) and  Western Fencing (Sabre).