Linda D’Onofrio, a tax attorney with nearly 30 years experience in municipal finance, is joining the New England-based law firm Day Pitney LLP to help expand its operations in New York.
D’Onofrio has a wide range of experience as bond and underwriter’s counsel for the private and public sectors.
She has worked with tax laws in municipal finance, taxable and tax-exempt financial instruments, and complex structured finance transactions, including derivatives.
D’Onofrio begins her new role Aug. 2 at the company’s Midtown Manhattan office at 7 Times Square.
“This opportunity is very exciting to me,” she said. “In addition to being hired as their tax attorney, they are looking to me to help expand their practice into the New York area.”
D’Onofrio has interacted with lawyers from Day Pitney for more than 20 years and described them as “familiar with extremely sophisticated financings.”
The firm has a long and distinguished history. It was formed from a 2007 merger between Hartford, Conn.-based Day, Berry & Howard, which was founded in 1919, and the New York-based Pitney Hardin, founded in 1902.
The late Justice William Brennan, who served on the Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990, made his name as a labor lawyer at Pitney Hardin in the 1930s.
Day Pitney today has more than 375 attorneys working in nine offices across the country.
Its specialties are corporate and litigation practices, and its public finance group is lead bond counsel for Connecticut. The group also serves as underwriter’s and trustees’ counsel.
Doug Gillette, who heads the public finance group of eight attorneys, said expanding that business has been part of the firm’s strategy since the 2007 merger.
“We’ve been seeking to capitalize on the strengths of the two firms,” he said. “For us in the municipal finance area it seemed natural to move beyond our traditionally Connecticut-centric practice.”
Hiring D’Onofrio advances that agenda, according to Gillette.
“Linda has a national reputation that really bolsters our inherently strong team and gives us a good opportunity to expand into New York and become more of a regional practice,” he said.
D’Onofrio’s career focus has been developing new products in the municipal and structured finance areas.
Her experience includes primary involvement in the expansion of creative financing techniques for a wide variety of municipal and asset-backed securities.
In the early 1980s, D’Onofrio worked alongside Merrill Lynch to create some of the first “stripped” Treasury bonds called TIGRs, or Treasury Investment Growth Receipts.
The products, a precursor to government-issued Strips, separated the coupon from the main part of the Treasury bond, and then sold the stripped pieces separately.
“It really was the beginning of the ideas that led to the mortgage-backed securities stuff,” she said. “I did that a long, long time ago. It’s probably the most significant thing I’ve ever done.”
D’Onofrio, who resides in Brooklyn, said her experience with complex instruments is “very well suited” to the current market environment, in part because of Build America Bonds, the taxable asset class created last year.
“With BABs, you really need to understand the tax rules,” she said. “I do.”
D’Onofrio was most recently a partner at Blank Rome LLP from November 2007 to last January.
She was also a tax attorney for Winstead PC from 2002 to 2007, Winston & Strawn LLP from 1998 to 2002, and Jones Day from 1991 to 1998, among others. She is an alumna of the Georgetown University Law Center.
Outside her legal practice, D’Onofrio was recently elected a trustee of the New York Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit civic organization that aims to influence the finances and services of New York City and New York State government.
