Bates White: Economic Consulting

Kathleen King has three decades of experience as an economist specializing in energy markets and bank regulation. She has provided testimony and expert support in contested proceedings, as well as advisory services, and she worked for a major energy company, a private equity firm, and the Federal Reserve Board. Cases have included market manipulation, pricing, trading and risk management, bankruptcy; NSR cases; and disputes involving power plants.

Dr. King has testified on alleged market manipulation, including assessment of trade-by-trade data, opined on the fair value of natural gas transactions and on reasons for oil price movements, and assessed cost pass-through in gasoline markets. She has analyzed the riskiness of trading practices, assessed the accuracy of public disclosures regarding trading and risk management practices, and conducted due diligence on trading and marketing companies.

Dr. King has provided expert support in cases involving power plant construction and damages and cogeneration plant contracts rejected in bankruptcy. She conducted economic due diligence on generating assets and contracts, including market assessment and price forecasting. Dr. King developed analytic techniques for valuation and risk assessment of portfolios of generating assets, traded positions, and full-requirements contracts. In addition, Dr. King has estimated demand response and designed time-differentiated rates in retail electricity markets.

Selected Experience

• Provided expert rebuttal testimony on behalf of FERC Enforcement Staff in the Amaranth market manipulation case. Analysis found statistically significant price reversals, consistent with alleged manipulation, that Amaranth′s at-issue trading differed from its historical trading pattern, and that there was no evidence market fundamentals caused the at-issue price movements.
• Filed multiple expert reports on behalf of members of a joint defense group in the bankruptcy of National Gas Distributors. Opined on the fair value of forward contracts and whether the contracts were commodity forward agreements and thus protected from avoidance by the safe harbor provision of the bankruptcy code.
• Coauthored expert reports on the causes of oil price increases in arbitration over a contract dispute regarding a price adjustment clause involving the manufacture and sale of polyester fiber.
• Provided support in arbitration to the attorneys for a major energy company on issues related to trading and risk management practices of a trading and marketing firm, trends and practices in traded energy markets, and pricing of structured and vanilla transactions.
• Provided support to the defense attorneys in a criminal trial on issues related to trading and business practices in the merchant energy industry.
• Provided support to the attorneys for an EPC contractor in arbitration on issues of schedule delays and performance guarantees in the construction of a cogeneration plant.
• Provided litigation support in cases of alleged violation of New Source Review standards under the Clean Air Action on behalf of the attorneys for a major utility.
• Provided market assessment, price forecasting, and liquidity analysis for the lenders to the U.S. subsidiary of an international IPP.

Education

PhD, Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

MS, Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

BA, Economics and International Relations, University of Wisconsin-Madison