Peter Dennis Cleary

PETER D. CLEARY, ESQ.

Peter Dennis Cleary died on the morning of February 11, 2021. He passed peacefully in his sleep with his labradoodle and BFF Charlie napping faithfully by his side.
Mr. Cleary was born on March 30, 1953 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada to Isabel Gertrude Hermione Lloyd, a Canadian and Thomas Leo Cleary, who was born in Denver and grew up in Santa Fe, both parents being from cattle ranching families.
Peter Cleary thus grew up with dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship, a love of the West and the ambition to become a good horseman. As a boy, he lived in the Middle East (Beirut and Damascus), Calgary, Switzerland, the Philippines, New York, and California. He graduated from Tustin High School there in 1974 with a citation from then Governor Ronald Reagan for academic excellence.
He went on to study Philosophy at Princeton College and received an A.B. in 1974. He graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1977. While at Harvard, he met his wife Katherine and they were married in 1979 in New York City. Mr. Cleary was admitted to the New York Bar in 1980 and the California Bar in 1990.
He had a distinguished international career in private law practice over 30 years specializing in cross-border energy, infrastructure and finance, with eight years of in-house experience as the general counsel of a multilateral financial institution in Washington, D.C. and at an independent oil company in the Middle East.
Before accepting a role in 1980 in Hong Kong, Mr. Cleary made a tour of the Southwest with his parents and fell in love with the landscape, the light and especially Santa Fe, which he never forgot. He remained in Hong Kong from 1980 to 1987, becoming a partner at Coudert Brothers in 1985. He opened the firm's Tokyo office and was there from 1987 to 1989, after which he transferred to Los Angeles from 1989 to 1992. The firm recalled him to Hong Kong in 1992.
In 1993, he continued to be based in Hong Kong, joining Chadbourne & Park as a partner, and then leaving that firm in 1997 to become a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where he remained for eight years. He took a sabbatical one summer in Florence during this period, and studied Italian and Renaissance art, which he enjoyed immensely.
In September of 2005, he was appointed Director and General Counsel of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. where he helped put through a convention change which altered the shape and capabilities of the agency.
Mr. Cleary served as General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs at RAK Petroleum Public Company Limited at its headquarters in Dubai, UAE from January 2010 to July 2013. He left the Middle East to make a return to Hong Kong in August 2013 as Senior Counsel at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, from which he retired to New Mexico in 2018.
He loved Italy, Hemingway and Wagner. In partial retirement, he enjoyed skiing at the Santa Fe Ski Basin and riding his horse Pancho, learning to rope and cut cattle. He was known as a tough transactional lawyer with a keen eye for finding the deal to be done. He was also a great raconteur, with a library of humorous stories and jokes, most of which he laughed at himself as he told them. He was a self-taught expert in several art fields, including Japanese Zenga, Khmer sculpture, and Caucasian carpets. His memory was legendary for facts, figures, images, and history.
Mr. Cleary was an excellent host and grill chef, and he always dressed with polish and taste, whatever the occasion. He created a library of city guides for friends which included 3-5 day walking tour itineraries which combined important and sometimes little-known historical sites, interesting shops, and restaurants. He admired fine workmanship and craft and knew someone in every major city with a particular talent for some specialty or another.
He was a bear, a teddy to those he loved and a grizzly to those who tried to harm them. He was preceded in death by his parents and will be greatly missed by his wife Katherine D'Arcy; their adult children, Alexandra (Hong Kong), Thomas (Santa Fe), and Elizabeth (Vancouver); his two brothers, Michael (Gunnison, Colorado) and Sean (Montrose, Colorado); and Katherine D'Arcy's parents, Ruth and Paul, as well as Charlie and Pancho, and many friends around the world.
Due to the pandemic, private family services were held on February 20 at the Kenneth J.G. Semon Memorial Garden at the Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe. The family thanks everyone for the many generous gifts of food and flowers received, but requests that any future gifts in Peter's memory go to the Museum of New Mexico Foundation in his name.