Peter Beshar is the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Marsh
McLennan, a Fortune 200 professional services firm. MMC, which operates
through Marsh, Guy Carpenter, Mercer and Oliver Wyman, has 75,000
employees and a market capitalization of $75 billion.
Mr. Beshar leads the Legal, Compliance, Communications, Government
Relations and Risk Management departments.
Mr. Beshar is a recognized thought leader on cyber security with deep
expertise at the intersection of private enterprise and public policy. He has
testified before the U.S. Senate Banking, Commerce and Homeland Security
Committees, the House Financial Services Committee and the European
Parliament. He has also published op-eds in the New York Times, the Washington Post, US News &
World Report and Fortune.
Prior to joining Marsh McLennan in 2004, Mr. Beshar was a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and
Co-Chair of the firm’s Securities Litigation Group. Earlier in his career, he served as the Assistant
Attorney General in charge of the New York State Attorney General’s Task Force on Illegal Firearms
and as the Special Assistant to Secretary Cyrus Vance in connection with the United Nations' peace
negotiations in the former Yugoslavia.
For his civic contributions, Mr. Beshar has received the Distinguished Leadership Award from John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Business Leadership Award from the Citizens Union of New
York and the Law and Society Award from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. He also serves
as the Executive sponsor of MMC’s Veterans initiative and its Military Mondays program; GI Jobs
Magazine recently named MMC the No. 1 Military-Friendly Employer in the US. In 2021, Mr. Beshar
was named a Top 100 Governance Leader by the National Association of Corporate Directors, and
was recently nominated by the American Lawyer as a finalist for General Counsel of the Year.
Mr. Beshar was appointed by President Obama to the Board of Trustees of the Wilson International
Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. He also serves as a Trustee of CARE USA, John Jay College
and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University.
Mr. Beshar graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School. He and his wife have three
children and live in Rye, New York.