David J. Kates

David Kates is a partner and the Co-Practice Group Leader of Chapman's Public Finance Department. He focuses his practice on tax-exempt and taxable financings for nonprofit health care entities, serving as bond counsel, underwriter's counsel, issuer's counsel, borrower's counsel, restructuring counsel, and purchaser's counsel.

David has extensive experience with health care finance transactions across a wide range of structures, including multimodal transactions, embedded derivatives, forward commitments, and swaps. Building on this experience, he helped develop a first-of-its-kind tax-exempt financing structure for nonprofit health care borrowers participating in energy-as-a-service (EaaS) projects.

Beyond his health care finance practice, David advises on the development and documentation of derivative products—including guaranteed investment contracts, interest rate swaps, repurchase agreements, and forward delivery agreements—for clients across the municipal finance spectrum.

David also counsels financial institutions on the enforceability of closeout netting and collateral arrangements, helping clients achieve favorable regulatory treatment through structured netting memoranda.

A frequent speaker, David has presented at national conferences on tax-exempt bond financings and post-issuance compliance. He has served on the steering committee of the National Association of Bond Lawyers and led panels on health care facilities. He has also participated in programming for the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA).

At Chapman, David serves on the firm's Partner Review Committee and is a former member of the governing Policy Committee.

David started his legal career at Chapman. Prior to rejoining the firm, he practiced in the health care group at Jones Day.