HORSHAM, Pa., May 29, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Toll Brothers (NYSE:TOL) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mark K. Kessler as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of the Company, effective May 30, 2007. Mr. Kessler has been for the past 22 years a partner in the law firm of Wolf Block, where his major clients included Toll Brothers. Mr. Kessler is a noted corporate and securities lawyer whose areas of practice emphasized corporate and securities counseling, mergers, acquisitions and public and private financing.
Robert I. Toll, Chairman and CEO of Toll Brothers, Inc., said, "Mark is an incredibly well respected individual in the legal community and has been a terrific legal advisor to us for over 20 years. We are privileged to have Mark join Toll's management team."
Mr. Kessler, a graduate of Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, clerked for a Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice and served as Assistant to a Commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. He has been a frequent lecturer and author of articles on corporate and securities law and legal ethics.
Mr. Kessler is a member of the American Law Institute, the Philadelphia and American Bar Associations. He serves on the American Bar Association's Committee on Regulation of Securities, and has served as chairman of the Philadelphia Bar Association's Section on Business Law and the Committee on Securities Regulation. In 2007, he received the Dennis H. Replansky Award from the Philadelphia Bar Association's Section on Business Law. Mr. Kessler has been named by the National Law Journal as a leading figure at the national securities bar.
Mr. Kessler is a former national President and Board member of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America; in 2005, he received the Charles G. Berwind Lifetime Achievement Award from that organization. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Arcadia University.
Mr. Kessler succeeds Don Liu in the position of General Counsel. Mr. Liu has accepted the position of General Counsel for Xerox Corporation.
Toll Brothers, Inc. is the nation's leading builder of luxury homes. The Company began business in 1967 and became a public company in 1986. Its common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "TOL". The Company serves move-up, empty-nester, active-adult and second-home home buyers and operates in 22 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
Toll Brothers builds luxury single-family detached and attached home communities, master planned luxury residential resort-style golf communities and urban low-, mid- and high-rise communities, principally on land it develops and improves. The Company operates its own architectural, engineering, mortgage, title, land development and land sale, golf course development and management, home security and landscape subsidiaries. The Company also operates its own lumber distribution, and house component assembly and manufacturing operations.
Toll Brothers, a FORTUNE 500 Company, is the only publicly traded national home building company to have won all three of the industry's highest honors: America's Best Builder from the National Association of Home Builders, the National Housing Quality Award, and Builder of the Year. Toll Brothers proudly supports the communities in which it builds; among other philanthropic pursuits, the Company sponsors the Toll Brothers -- Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network, bringing opera to neighborhoods throughout the world. For more information, visit tollbrothers.com.