Catherine Lee is a partner in the New York office of Latham & Watkins and a member of the firm’s Corporate Department, Capital Markets Practice, and Financial Institutions Industry Group. Ms. Lee serves on the firm’s Opinions committee.

Ms. Lee advises clients on the structuring, negotiation, and execution of equity-linked capital markets transactions, structured repurchase transactions, issuer forward transactions, and complex over-the-counter derivative transactions for various hedging and monetization strategies, and equity and other derivative finance transactions, including margin loans secured by publicly traded shares, pre-IPO shares, and convertible and/or debt instruments. Ms. Lee provides comprehensive market knowledge and valuable insights to both corporate and institutional clients on derivative, broker dealer and bank regulatory issues, insolvency and credit support concerns, as well as compliance matters.

In addition to derivatives, Ms. Lee has practiced in the areas of cross-border corporate finance, private equity, strategic investment, joint ventures structured finance, investment management, and banking, covering a wide variety of commercial law issues.

Ms. Lee has represented a number of global financial institution clients, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley.

Ms. Lee also represents numerous “buy-side” clients of the firm on equity derivatives transactions and related issues, including corporate issuers like a public global biotechnology company, private equity and asset management funds, and sovereign wealth clients.

Ms. Lee serves on the firm’s Opinions committee and previously served as Co-Chair of the firm’s Women Enriching Business (WEB) committee.

Ms. Lee’s experience includes representation of:

  • Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley on call spread overlay transactions in connection with convertible notes offerings with, among others, Airbnb, Aerie Pharmaceuticals Inc., Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Beauty Health, Beyond Meat, BioLife Solutions Inc., Cytokinetics Inc., Danimer Scientific, Envista Holdings Corporation, and Guardant Health
  • Private equity sponsors and corporate counterparties on a number of cross-border structured hedging or monetization transactions, or synthetic acquisition transactions with financial institutions
  • Several issuer clients on a number of synthetic repurchase transactions as well as margin financing transactions

Bar Qualification

  • New York

Education

  • JD, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 2004
    cum laude, Noyes E. Leech Award (Significant contribution to the Journal of International Economic Law), P. Pemberton Morris Prize (Evidence, Pleading and Practice)
  • BBA, Korea University, 2000

Languages Spoken

  • English
  • Korean
General Recognition Thumbnail
June 4, 2021 Recognition

Latham Earns Top Derivatives Rankings

Firm ranked in Band 1 by Chambers USA; seven lawyers individually recognized for premier transactional, regulatory, and enforcement capabilities.