Squire Patton Boggs is pleased to announce that Catherine (“Catie”) Romanchek will serve as Group Leader of the firm’s nationally recognized Public & Infrastructure Finance (“PIF”) Practice Group, effective January 1, 2024. She will succeed Robert (“Bob”) D. Labes.
“Our firm has ranked as one of the top economic development and bond counsel firms in Ohio and nationally for over a century. Under Catie’s leadership our commitment to delivering results for our clients on cutting-edge matters remains unchanged,” said Michele Connell, Global Managing Partner.
Ms. Connell continued, “I thank Bob for his steady leadership through some of the most transformative and uncertain times in the US economy, while maintaining the top tier position of our practice.”
Ms. Romanchek focuses her practice on public finance transactions, serving as bond, disclosure and underwriters’ counsel in general obligation and revenue financings for public issuers, including municipalities, airport authorities and conduit issuers. She has a national reputation in airport finance and has served as bond and special counsel to the City of Cleveland since she began her legal career at Squire Patton Boggs in 2003. She has served as Deputy Practice Group Leader of the Public & Infrastructure Finance Group since 2021.
“As Practice Group Leader, I plan to continue building upon the great foundation established by Bob and his predecessors,” said Ms. Romanchek. “Demand for our services continues to grow at a critical time of investment in the nation’s infrastructure, and I am committed to enhancing and expanding our platform and best-in-class service offerings throughout the United States.”
The PIF Group was ranked as one of the Top 10 Bond Counsel firms (by dollar volume) in the US in 2022, with 107 publicly-offered deals totaling $8.647 billion. The strong performance of the practice group was recognized in Refinitiv’s annual United States Municipal Review for 2022, and highlighted in The Bond Buyer, the leading daily news source for the public finance industry.
Among the significant and diverse transactions the firm’s Public & Infrastructure Finance team advised on in 2022 and 2023 were:
- advising and assisting with closing a precedent setting deal for the development of a professional sports and entertainment stadium in Nashville, for which the bond sale set a public subsidy record with $705.1 million of bonds allocated to help finance the construction of an estimated $2.1 billion state-of-the-art domed stadium;
- serving as bond counsel for the bond and commercial financing for the construction of a new $4.2 billion Terminal 6 at John F. Kennedy International Airport;
- representing the US Virgin Islands in the successful closing of its historic $955.5 million Matching Fund Special Purpose Securitization Corporation bond offering; and
- serving as bond counsel for the “sustainability-linked” bond financing to fund NewLife Forest Restoration, a leading sustainable forest products business in the Southwest US, to scale forest restoration activities and reduce the occurrence of catastrophic wildfires.