Catherine DeBono Holmes

About Catherine DeBono Holmes

Catherine DeBono Holmes is corporate & securities attorney at the law firm of Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Mitchell, LLP, headquartered in Los Angeles. Attorney DeBono Holmes is the chair of the firm’s investment capital law group, and has been practicing law for more than 30 years. She concentrates her practice on business transactions and investment capital, helping clients from around the world to raise, invest, and manage capital from both non-U.S. and U.S. investors. She has represented a number of Chinese investors in the purchase of U.S. businesses and hotels, and has assisted more than 50 real estate developers to obtain EB-5 financing for mixed-use, multi-family, and hotel developments.

Attorney DeBono Holmes’ areas of expertise include securities broker-dealer registration, regulatory compliance and exemptions, investment adviser registration, regulatory compliance and exemptions (U.S. federal and states), investment company act exemptions, finance lender licensing, real estate broker licensing, U.S. private investment fund formation and capital raising. She has handled a wide-range of EB-5 project-related documentation, such as private placement memorandums, partnership agreements and operating agreements, subscription agreements, escrow agreements, and regional center services agreements, among other documents.

Attorney DeBono Holmes’ experience in the hospitality industry includes public-private hotel development, hotel management and franchise agreements, hotel and resort purchase and sale transactions, and urban mixed-use and resort financing and development. She has assisted hotel brands in the United States, and management companies with resort developments in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and Egypt. Among other representative accomplishments, she has assisted in the negotiation and RFP of a qualified management contract for a 1000-room, city-owned convention center hotel in the United States.

Attorney DeBono Holmes has also worked with various accounting firms in forming or acquiring investment advisory groups. She has experience assisting a national securities brokerage firm in acquiring regional broker businesses; assisting securities broker-dealers with multiple real estate-focused private investment funds; and assisting the biggest publicly-traded Taiwanese hotel company in purchasing all of the Regent Hotels brand’s assets, including all hotel management, all intellectual property, and agreements for hotels in Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Attorney DeBono Holmes graduated with her bachelor's degree from the University of California at Berkeley, where she also completed her Juris Doctor at the School of Law at Boalt Hall. She is admitted to the State Bar of California and is a member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Board of Directors of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW), the Sandpipers (a community assembly in the South Bay of Southern California), the Executive Committee and Business Law Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the Business Law Section of the State Bar of California. She was formerly a member of Boalt Hall Alumni Association’s board of directors.