Kenneth M. Greene

After graduation from the University of Virginia Law School and serving on active duty with the JAG Corps of the United States Navy during the Vietnam War, Kenny Greene joined Carruthers & Roth where he practiced for over 50 years until his retirement from the firm at the end of 2024. He remains associated with the firm serving as Of Counsel. While an active member of the firm, Kenny’s practice focused on a wide variety of transactional matters involving capital markets, including secured real estate, commercial and other asset based loans, factoring, mergers and acquisitions, as well as a broad spectrum of creditors’ rights and remedies including business bankruptcy.  He also documented and closed literally hundreds of secured loans, restructured troubled loans, represented creditors in a wide variety of insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings and counseled them in the exercise of their creditors’ rights and remedies, and at the same time maintained a general commercial practice representing a wide variety of privately owned businesses.

Kenny was long been active in the North Carolina Bar Association and perhaps is the only person in the Bar’s history to receive two lifetime achievement awards from two different sections.  In 2010 he was the recipient of the Business Law Section’s Distinguished Service Award and in 2019 he was the recipient of the Bankruptcy Section’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He was instrumental in the Bar’s sponsorship of various modernization statutes that have been enacted by the North Carolina legislature, including the North Carolina Commercial Receivership Act, the Act Validating Reciprocal Attorneys’ Fees Provisions in North Carolina Business Contracts, the North Carolina Choice of Law and Forum in Business Contracts, and the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act.  Kenny’s bar activities also included an active role in the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association and service on two of that section’s task forces in the drafting and publication of two model agreements, one a model account control agreement under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and the other a model intercreditor agreement between first and second lienholders. He is also a past president and regent and retired fellow of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers and in 2022 he was inducted into the North Carolina Legal Practice Hall of Fame in recognition of his lifetime of achievements and being a role model for all North Carolina lawyers.

Kenny is also the author of the North Carolina chapters of the Commercial Lending Law sections of Commercial Lending Law, Second Edition: A Jurisdiction-by-Jurisdiction Guide to U.S. and Canadian Law (2016), and The Law of Guaranties, A Jurisdiction-by-Jurisdiction Guide to U.S. and Canadian Law (2013), both published by the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. He also co-authored the chapter on North Carolina receiverships in the treatise Strategic Alternatives For and Against Distressed Businesses (2018-2022), published by Thomson/Reuters/West.