…SELF-CONFIDENCE IS SIMPLY KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT AND GOING FOR IT. Natasha M. Songonuga
This Director is a “Rising Star” and Critical Member of the Gibbons Team Natasha Songonuga has extensive experience in business reorganization and restructuring matters, working across the full spectrum of Chapter 11 cases, as well as counseling creditors in assignments for the benefit of creditors in state court insolvency proceedings. She also handles other bankruptcy matters and has represented landlords in FDIC receiverships of banks. Natasha was one of only 20 attorneys selected to the Super Lawyers 2013 Delaware Rising Stars list. “My biggest career leap was leaving Gibbons in the middle of my career for the opportunity to take the DE bar exam,” said Natasha. “While that leap was very risky and rocky in the beginning, I learned that self-confidence is simply knowing what you want and going for it.”
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Natasha is a critical member of a team headed by James R. Zazzali, of counsel to Gibbons and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, who serves as Chapter 11 Trustee for DBSI, Inc., and 51 affiliated Chapter 11 debtors in jointly administered cases pending in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. Representation of the Trustee involves, among other things, the resolution of many significant issues, as well as numerous contested matters relating to the debtors’ multimillion dollar real estate portfolio. Approximately 34,000 creditor claims have been filed, and liabilities are estimated to be $600 million—the largest number of claims in a single case ever handled by the debtors’ claims agent. Natasha works
PROFILES IN DIVERSITY JOURNAL Summer 2015
closely with the firm’s litigation, corporate, and real estate finance practices in this representation, as well as with other members of the bankruptcy team. As director of Gibbons P.C.’s Financial Restructuring & Creditors’ Rights Department—a position to which she was named in January 2015—Natasha is a key component of the firm’s robust Delaware practice. In participating in the representation of the Chapter 11 trustee for DBSI, Inc., and its affiliates—a conglomerate of real estate entities with listed assets valued at over $2.65 billion—Natasha was instrumental in a complex process that resulted in the confirmation of a joint Chapter 11 plan of liquidation. PDJ