He worked in the field of corporate law, specializing in the fields of securities law and mergers and acquisitions. He started out with the firm
Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine and moved on to Gordon, Hurwitz, Butowsky, Weitzen, Shalov & Wein. From the start he ran with a high-flying crowd; one of his clients was famed financier
Carl Icahn. He later on remarked, "I thought the finance side was more exciting than the law, so I moved to an investment banking firm"—
Kidder, Peabody & Co. The barely 30-year-old Otis became a vice president at
First Boston Corporation in 1987. In this job he got his first exposure to Florida's booming economy as he worked on real estate deals there. He became interested in public and government finance, serving as managing director of Giebert Municipal Capital in 1990 and 1991, and as a vice president and later managing director in
Chemical Bank's securities arm between 1991 and 1995. He played a key part in turning around the bank's struggling public finance division, shepherding funding of $2.6 billion for tax-exempt pollution-control projects and participating a $208 million New York City bond issue that was named deal of the year by
Institutional Investor magazine. In 1995, Otis was recruited by Darden Restaurants in Orlando for the post of treasurer, overseeing finance activities for the 1,200-restaurant chain. He correctly assessed Darden as a company on the rise as its "casual dining" market niche—high-volume sit-down restaurants a step above fast food in terms of quality—was growing rapidly. Otis came to the company in the final stages of its spin-off from food giant
General Mills. While Otis supervised a staff of six, his decisions had company wide ramifications as Darden acquired new sites and financed new buildings all over the country; the chain owns its restaurants rather than franchising them to independent entrepreneurs. He ascended the corporate ladder at Darden, becoming senior vice president of finance in 1997 and chief financial officer in 1999. As the chain shuttered its struggling China Coast restaurants and opened new ventures such as the casual sports-bar barbecue Smokey Bones and the Caribbean-themed Bahama Breeze, As longtime Darden CEO Joe L. Lee, who opened the first
Red Lobster restaurant in Florida in 1967, approached retirement, Otis was widely regarded as a protégé of Lee, and after one of his top rivals left for a top position with
Burger King, his way was clear. Otis was named Lee's successor as CEO in 2004. He stepped down in 2014.
Compensation While CEO of Darden Restaurants in 2010, Otis earned a total compensation of $7,656,703, which included a base salary of $946,800, a cash bonus of $1,673,900, stocks granted of $1,783,697, options granted of $2,879,930, and other compensation totaling $372,376. ==Politics==