Profile: Karen E Wagner

Insolvency and Restructuring

Biography: Insolvency & Restructuring

Ms Wagner is member of Davis Polk & Wardwell's litigation department. She has represented debtors and creditors, including financial institutions and industrial companies, in workouts, restructurings and bankruptcy reorganisations. Clients have included Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Telecom Argentina, DLJ and others. She represented Telecom Argentina in a section 304 case, and has been involved in a chapter 15 case. She represented National Westminster Bank in the Maxwell Communications bankruptcy and the acquisition group in the Rockefeller Center bankruptcy. As counsel to LTV in its chapter 11 reorganisation, she litigated a wide array of matters, including the trial and appeal of numerous pension, tax and environmental issues.

Ms Wagner joined Davis Polk in 1979 and became a partner in 1988. She was associated with Stroock & Stroock & Lavan from 1976 to 1979. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 and in 1976 received her JD from the New York University School of Law, where she was an Arthur Garfield Hays Fellow.

As a member of committee J of the International Bar Association, Ms Wagner was chiefly responsible for drafting an international insolvency concordat that was adopted by the International Bar Association. She has spoken at national and regional gatherings of such groups as the American Bar Association, the American Law Institute/American Bar Association Institute on Employee Benefits in Bankruptcy and the Practising Law Institute, concerning basic issues of bankruptcy law and its complex intersection with pension, environmental, tax and labour law.

Ms Wagner is the author or joint author of many papers on bankruptcy as well as chapters of two books, one concerning international insolvency and the other labour law. She served as chair of the fraudulent conveyance task force of the American Bar Association and wrote papers concerning the fraudulent conveyance aspects of leveraged buyout transactions.

As well as the present publication, she is listed in Law Business Research's Who's Who Legal: International Who's Who of Insolvency and Restructuring (2006), Euromoney's Expert Guide to the World's Leading Insolvency & Restructuring Lawyers (2005), Expert Guides/IFLR's Guide to the World's Leading Insolvency and Restructuring Lawyers (2005) and PLC's Cross-border Restructuring & Insolvency Handbook (2005).