Maria R. Gattuso Partner MAIN OFFICE: New York Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP 787 Seventh Avenue New York, N.Y. 10019-6099, U.S.A. T 212-728-8294 F 212-728-9294

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Maria R. Gattuso is a partner in the Asset Management Group of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York. Ms. Gattuso has extensive experience representing registered investment companies, business development companies, private funds and their investment advisers. She provides counsel on the establishment and operation of registered investment companies (including municipal funds), new product development and alternative fund structures (including registered and unregistered master/feeder and fund-of-funds structures and business development companies), status issues, and regulatory issues affecting the creation and operation of public and private funds. She also has broad transactional experience involving funds and their advisers, including merger and acquisition transactions and fund reorganizations.

Ms. Gattuso is currently a co-chairperson of the 100 women in hedge funds™ Legal Peer Advisory Counsel. She has served as an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, where she has taught classes on investment management law.

Ms. Gattuso has participated in conference panels sponsored by the Investment Company Institute and Practicing Law Institute regarding important issues affecting the asset management industry, including compliance related matters, Pay-to-Play regulations, and registration requirements for investment advisers.

Best Lawyers (2012 edition) ranks Ms. Gattuso among the leading individuals nationally practicing in the area of mutual funds law.

Prior to joining Willkie, Ms. Gattuso was an associate and later a partner at Shearman & Sterling LLP and an associate at Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman, LLP and its predecessor firm.

Ms. Gattuso is fluent in Spanish.

• "Hedge Funds 2011: The Changing Regulatory Framework for Hedge Funds and Managers," (Practicing Law Institute 2011)
  
  
• "Money Market Fund Reform," (ICI 2009)
  
  
• "Pay-to-Play," (ICI 2009)
  
  
• "Regulatory Harmonization of the SEC and CFTC," (ICI 2009)
  
  
• "Negotiating the Purchase Agreement, "Mergers & Acquisitions in the 90s, A Step by Step Guide (Practicing Law Institute 1998)