Biography: Insurance & Reinsurance

Rachel Kronowitz, vice chair and founding partner of the law firm Gilbert LLP, is one of the most prominent lawyers in the insurance recovery field.

For more than 15 years, Ms Kronowitz has focused her practice representing corporate policyholders on strategic risk-management issues, corporations in structuring insurance and risk transfer portfolios, and recovering insurance from recalcitrant insurers. Ms Kronowitz has recovered billions of dollars in insurance assets for dozens of clients, restructured corporations to minimise the effect of significant exposures, and developed complex financial instruments that provide certainty of payments for product liability losses. As an example, Ms Kronowitz was at the forefront of the use of new financial instruments to assist clients in transferring the risk associated with insurance settlements paid over an extended period of time.

Some of Ms Kronowitz's recent matters include representing a Fortune 50 company in due diligence related to a multibillion-dollar acquisition of and counselling a Fortune 500 company with mass tort liability on issues related to corporate restructuring, private equity acquisition and insurance recovery. She has also represented a private equity firm in due diligence related to potential liabilities and available risk transfer mechanisms for target companies, a Fortune 50 pharmaceutical company in the resolution and payment of more than US$1 billion of coverage related to mass tort and pharmaceutical claims, and a Fortune 50 company against its D&O insurer for coverage for defence costs and indemnity payments in connection with shareholder litigation.

In addition to helping some of the biggest names in business at work, Ms Kronowitz is involved in helping disadvantaged women and children in her community. As the former chair and current member of the board of directors of the Washington Area Women's Foundation, she and her firm work closely with the grantee partners of the foundation – large grassroots organisations in the DC-metropolitan area – to improve the lives of underprivileged women and children in the region.

In 2008 Ms Kronowitz received a pro bono award from the Mississippi Center for Justice for her work related to insurance recovery assistance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Ms Kronowitz was named as one of 2007's 'Women to Watch' by Business Insurance magazine, and in 2007 the Washington Business Journal selected Ms Kronowitz as one of its 2007 'Women Who Mean Business'.