Partner

Christine M. Kong is partner in the firm’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Practice Group. Chris first joined the firm in September 1997, then departed in June 2005 to serve as a senior attorney for benefits/mergers and acquisitions for a Fortune 500 corporation. In May 2008, she returned to Drinker Biddle to practice in the New York office.

Chris’s practice focuses on a range of employee benefits and executive compensation matters for public and private companies, as well as tax-exempt entities. She counsels clients on matters relating to qualified retirement plans (such as the design, drafting, implementation and administration of 401(k) plans), non-qualified deferred compensation plans and other arrangements for executives (such as severance pay plans and change in control arrangements), equity-based incentive programs (including incentive and non-qualified stock option plans, stock appreciation rights plans, phantom stock plans and restricted stock plans), and health and welfare benefits. Chris also has extensive experience counseling clients on benefit matters in mergers and acquisitions and other corporate transactions.

Some of her recent representative matters: 

• Advised a Fortune 500 corporation in the financial services industry with retirement, welfare and payroll issues in connection with corporate transactions.
• Advised a tax-exempt client as to welfare and pension benefit issues in connection with the acquisition of a for-profit entity.
• Counseled a privately held technology client with the design, drafting and implementation of an incentive plan intended to provide employees with cash incentives in the event of a change of control.
• Counseled a publicly held client on 409A compliance issues for its nonqualified deferred compensation plan.
• Counseled a tax-exempt client on the winding-down process for a 403(b) plan following a corporate transaction.  

In General. Chris graduated from Arizona State University in 1991 with a degree in business management. She received her law degree from the Villanova University School of Law in 1995, where she was a member of the Villanova Law Review. Following law school, Chris was a law clerk to the Honorable J. Sydney Hoffman of the Pennsylvania Superior Court. In 1997, Chris received an LL.M. degree in taxation from the Villanova University School of Law.