Kirsten is part of Boardman Clark’s full-service banking and financial services team. She serves community financial institutions (along with their holding companies and subsidiaries), insurance companies, and investment advisers primarily located in Wisconsin, and she provides legal advice to regional and out of state clients from time to time. Kirsten works closely with the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, FDIC, Federal Reserve, OCC, the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance, the SEC and various state securities regulators on behalf of her financial service clients, and has extensive regulatory experience.
Kirsten has established de novo banks in Wisconsin and has helped form many holding companies for Wisconsin community banks. She regularly works with banks and their holding companies to acquire other banks and branches, and she has negotiated and shepherded the sale of mutual insurance companies, registered investment advisors and other businesses. Kirsten has helped banks, holding companies, insurance companies, microfinance companies (both profit and non-profit) and other corporations issue common stock, preferred stock, debt securities and trust preferred securities, to raise hundreds of millions of dollars capital. She has assisted a variety of financial service clients with regulatory investigations.
Kirsten also regularly helps advise start-ups and early stage companies dealing with the unique issues that need to be addressed early in the business life-cycle. Kirsten regularly assists with structuring securities offerings, preparing offering materials, and making required filings with Federal and state securities regulators. She has assisted her clients with creating various series of preferred stock and securing institutional investment. She also drafts proxy and other shareholder communications, prepares incentive plans and executive compensation agreements, reviews business contracts, assists with the formation of new companies, and advises boards of directors on both day-to-day matters and extraordinary corporate transactions.
On behalf of her non-profit clients, Kirsten assists with setting up microfinance loan funds, and also with the ongoing securities activities and compliance of such funds.
Admitted to Practice
- Wisconsin State Courts
Representative Work
- Kirsten successfully worked with the WBA to revise the new Wisconsin securities statutes to remove a provision that would have adversely impacted the traditional business of community banks in this state, and to assist in the drafting of Wisconsin’s crowdfunding statute.
- Kirsten assists real estate development groups in connection with many aspects of their developments, including the formation documents, commercial loan negotiation and documentation, and raising investment capital.
- Kirsten regularly assists banks with negotiating commercial loans, including tax-exempt municipal loans. She also has assisted banks and their directors and officers in enforcement actions.
- Kirsten has drafted many amicus briefs to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Court of Appeals on issues of significance to banking.
Community Involvement & Board Memberships
- Norcap Growth Fund (mutual fund), Former Board Member
- Jazz at Five, Board Member
- Madison Opera, Former Board of Trustees Member
Professional Memberships
- American Bar Association, Business Law Section
- State Bar of Wisconsin, Business Law Section
- Dane County Bar Association
Education
- J.D., cum laude, University of Wisconsin Law School, 1998
- Order of the Coif
- Managing Editor of Wisconsin Law Review
- M.A., Spanish Literature, University of Wisconsin – Madison
- B.A., Political Science and Spanish, with distinction, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Kirsten’s Select Writing & Presentations
U.S. Treasury Department Releases Updated FAQ on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)
The Banking Lawyer | 04.08.20
Today, April 8, 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department released an updated FAQ that addresses questions that lenders have regarding documenting, closing, and funding loans under the Paycheck Protection Program.