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.

Katie is experienced in bankruptcy appeals, and she successfully persuaded a federal appeals court to affirm the dismissal of a “rogue” bankruptcy petition by the ousted former board of directors of a scandal-plagued Chinese clean energy company. See In re Sino Clean Energy (Sino v. Seiden), 901 F.3d 1139 (9th Cir. 2018). In that regard, she focuses her practice on representation of court appointed receivers in Chinese reverse merger cases where the U.S. entity has “gone dark” and returned to China, leaving their U.S. investors without recourse. These cases often involve Cayman and BVI litigation and negotiations as the subsidiaries of these companies are often located there.

Katie also focuses on for profit schools and higher education restructurings, generally, with an emphasis on fraud investigation and intervention. She is building a practice focusing on representing higher education institutions, lenders, and private equity funds in all forms of litigation related to their business and financial restructuring of these schools.

She also represents banks and trustees of bank holding companies, including litigation related to procurement of tax refunds and disputes with the FDIC over refund ownership.

She further emphasizes her practice on representation of creditors, representations of creditors’ committees, indenture trustee representation, including representation of U.S. Bank and Wilmington Trust as the indenture trustee for certain bonds in the American Airlines, Samson Resources (oil and gas), Guaranty Financial, and Peabody Energy (coal) bankruptcies.

Katie has extensive experience in the representation of trustees regarding resolution and objection to bankruptcy claims, pursuit of fraudulent transfer and preference actions as well as litigation related to bad faith bankruptcy filings, Ponzi schemes, and 363 sales. She also has particular knowledge of individual and business Chapter 7’s and individual Chapter 11’s. Finally, she is experienced with e-discovery in bankruptcy cases.