Tony Barnes serves entrepreneurs and business clients of all sizes and specializes in mergers and acquisitions, private investment transactions and general business and commercial law.

Tony's practice involves advising and guiding start-ups and established businesses in connection with their day-to-day operations and with the multitude of financing transactions and acquisitions, mergers and divestitures that they may require, both on the buy and sell side.

Tony also represents investors, venture capital firms, issuers and target businesses in connection with all types of investment and buy out transactions ranging from small subscriptions to complex, multi-staged buy-outs involving multiple equity, mezzanine and senior debt financing components and the complex preferred stock, warrant, shareholder agreement and management participation issues that such structures present.

Tony has expertise in a wide variety of general business law matters including entity formation, succession planning and the negotiation, structuring, and preparation of a wide variety of commercial and business agreements, such as manufacturing and supply, outsourcing, consulting, employment, business protection, confidentiality and licensing agreements.

Before becoming an attorney, Tony was a Project Manager in the construction field. This business background has enabled him to be a strategic partner with his clients and to provide practical, cost-effective and useful counsel to entrepreneurs and business people of all types.

Tony received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with distinction, from Kenyon College and his law degree from Vanderbilt University, where he was the Executive Administrative Editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law and where he received the school award for his work in Secured Transactions and the Taxation of Transnational Operations.

Tony is active in many charitable causes and serves on the Board of Directors of the James Hale Memorial Trust (a charity affiliated with Gift of Life) and the East Grand Rapids Community Foundation. He is a frequent speaker and author on a variety of business law and strategy topics.