Katherine Catanese

Partner at Foley & Lardner (United States)

Speaker

Katherine R. Catanese assists troubled companies facing critical points in their businesses in solving problems related to financial distress and restructuring. She also represents investors and other parties in fraud-based litigation arising in the insolvency space. She is a partner and vice chair in the firm’s Bankruptcy and Restructuring Group, as well as a member of the Bankruptcy and Health Care Restructuring sub team.

Katie effectively and efficiently handles various cross-border fraud matters. She represents companies, investors, and hedge funds — both onshore and offshore — in bankruptcy ligation including involuntary bankruptcies and Chapter 15 bankruptcies. In this regard, she is skilled in litigating jurisdiction, fraudulent transfer, alter ego, and related litigation involving the intersection between U.S. and offshore entities. She assisted in filing an involuntary petition for a group of hedge fund creditors and then assisted in procuring a settlement in that bankruptcy that resolved over a dozen lawsuits in the U.S. and offshore and is liquidating the remaining hedge fund assets. See In re Stillwater Asset Backed Offshore Fund, Ltd., 485 B.R. 498 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2013) (where the court granted the involuntary petition against an offshore fund whose creditors were offered ineffective DIKs).

She also assists companies with maximizing the value of their assets through both in- and out- of court asset sales. During COVID, she represented a prominent seafood restaurant chain in avoiding a bankruptcy filing through a successful out of court distressed asset sale.

She also focuses her practice on helping creditors solve problems related to all aspects of distressed debt. Recently, this has included representing numerous customers in cryptocurrency bankruptcies. Katie also represents debtors, lenders, and strategic buyers in Article 9 sales and assignments for the benefit of creditors, including a retail catalog company buying distressed assets from apparel company; Chadwick’s of Boston, a 75-year old family owned seafood wholesale business through an out of court sale of its assets; a lender fund through an Article 9 sale of a rock quarry in New York; and a private real estate fund which purchased distressed nursing home assets and then sold these assets through a bankruptcy and then, later, a receivership.