Valerie Bantner Peo represents stakeholders in all aspects of restructuring, insolvency, and commercial litigation. She regularly represents financial institutions, including agribusiness lenders and alternative lenders, software licensors, commercial landlords and tenants, equipment lessors, buyers of distressed assets, judgment creditors, and fiduciaries such as receivers and assignees.
Ms. Bantner Peo is the Administrative Co-Chair of Buchalter’s Insolvency & Financial Law Group, co-chair of the Partnership Elevation Committee and a past chair of the Women@Buchalter committee.
From 2022 to 2025, she served as a Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Council for the Northern District of California, serving as co-chair in 2023-24. Ms. Bantner Peo served on the Board of Directors of the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (“IWIRC”) from 2020 to 2025. She is a past Chair of the Executive Committee of the San Francisco Bar Association’s Commercial Law and Bankruptcy section and a current Board member of the Bay Area Bankruptcy Forum.
Among other accolades, Ms. Bantner Peo was named to the 2026 Legal 500 U.S. Elite rankings in Finance and Restructuring and was honored as one of the 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading U.S. Bankruptcy & Restructuring Lawyers. In 2023, she received the IWIRC Fetner Award, presented to a member whose contributions to IWIRC have helped to fuel growth and expansion of IWIRC’s mission globally.
Ms. Bantner Peo served as a law clerk for the Honorable Edward D. Jellen (Ret.), U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California.