Partner Jonathan Kass heads the Delaware office of Reid Collins & Tsai LLP. His practice focuses on the representation of hedge funds, mutual funds and family offices to maximize their returns and mitigate losses in connection with mergers, acquisitions and significant asset sales. Kass has litigated claims concerning practically every form of public security in a variety of contexts, including appraisal, corporate governance, securities fraud, fixed income disputes, violations of debt covenants, structured finance disputes, and other significant events impacting clients’ rights as debt or equity holders.
A trusted counsel to some of the nation’s leading investment managers, Kass is recognized as a relentless advocate with the business judgment clients value when engaging in plaintiff-side litigation. Kass has been a leading advocate for investors in the appraisal rights space and has tried numerous cases in the Delaware Court of Chancery, most recently In re Appraisal of Solera Holdings, Inc. and In re Appraisal of Stillwater Mining Co.
Lawdragon Honors
| Honor | Year | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| The 2027 Lawdragon 100 Leading Cayman Lawyers | 2027 | Shareholder Appraisal, inc. Offshore, Derivative & Fiduciary Litigation |
| The 2021 Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers | 2021 | Financial Litigation |
Over his career, Kass has recovered millions of dollars for plaintiffs in valuation and market related disputes. He has represented plaintiffs in appraisal, corporate governance, securities fraud, antitrust, FCA and FCPA disputes, against companies such as Tile Shop, Air Methods, ISCA, Bob Evans, Longtop Financial Technologies, GlaxoSmithKline as well as countless financial institutions and other foreign corporations both within the United States and jurisdictions around the world.
Currently, Kass is litigating valuation disputes in Delaware and the Cayman Islands; the latter in response to a series of going-private transactions involving Chinese corporations.
Kass has litigated countless fiduciary duty matters, recovering monetary damages as well as achieving significant corporate governance reforms. He was a member of the trial team that obtained a preliminary injunction against Ancestry.com in connection with it going private. More recently, he helped secure a preliminary injunction against Tile Shop Holdings, Inc. arising from alleged efforts by members of the Board to cause the company to “go dark” (delist from the NASDAQ and deregister with the SEC) in order to conduct a “street sweep” (purchase large blocks of stock quickly) at depressed prices.
Prior to moving to Delaware, Kass practiced at White & Case in New York on the defense side. Among other high-profile matters, he represented Deutsche Bank in connection with the collapse of Enron, conducted FCPA-related investigations for large pharmaceutical companies and led an internal review of the Oil-for-Food program for the Government of Iraq. While at White & Case, Kass was a member of the trial team that represented MHR Fund Management in Chancery Court against claims of fiduciary duty breaches arising from a private issuance of public equity in Loral Space & Communications. The Loral case went to trial and resulted in a seminal decision by then V.C. Strine. He often credits his experience on Loral as the reason he wanted to move to Delaware and become a Chancery Court practitioner.