Private Credit
With cross-practice teams serving clients from key financial centers around the world, our private credit practice provides comprehensive support to private credit funds and other alternative lending platforms.
DIRECT LENDING
Our finance team represents private credit funds, business development companies, specialty finance companies, family offices, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, and other nonbank lenders in direct lending and other extensions of credit in a broad array of financing structures across industries. We represent lenders in domestic and cross-border transactions with borrowers ranging in size from emerging companies to investment grade, with a focus on the middle market. We also represent market leaders, next-tier players, and recent entrants to the market.
Our experience extends to all parts of the capital structure, including:
- Senior and stretch senior financings
- Unitranche financings, including with first out/last out facilities
- Second lien financings
- Mezzanine and holdco financings
- Asset-based financings
- Equity kickers and co-investments
- Debtor-in-possession and exit financings
Our team has experience with financing leveraged buyouts with private equity sponsors, as well as transactions with complex intercreditor arrangements. Beyond representing clients in their initial lending transactions, we advise on all stages of an investment’s lifecycle—including distressed situations, workouts, restructurings, and bankruptcies.
Our private credit team benefits from active collaboration with market-leading lawyers across disciplines and industry sectors—including finance, investment management, structured finance, bankruptcy, corporate, private equity, tax, energy, ERISA and employee benefits, financial services, healthcare, labor and employment, life sciences, retail and ecommerce, sports, technology, and transportation.
FORMATION & CAPITAL RAISING
We collaborate seamlessly across disciplines to help sponsors to structure, form, and raise capital for private credit funds and other nonbank lending platforms. Our lawyers work across practices and with our clients to design private credit fund structures tailored to a variety of debt investment strategies as well as the needs of different investor classes, including non-US and US tax-exempt investors. We also have experience addressing the unique features of business development companies and real estate investment trusts (REITs), and counsel sponsor teams on regulatory matters and the design of internal governance and compensation arrangements.
Beyond our work for sponsors, our lawyers represent institutional investors in private fund investments, including in their growing allocations of capital to private credit funds. Many institutional investors—including sovereign wealth funds, other non-US investors, and US tax-exempt investors—face complicated tax and regulatory considerations when evaluating a commitment to a private credit fund. Our teams help our institutional investor clients to evaluate the legal, regulatory, tax and other economic considerations relevant to their investments in private credit funds and other alternative lending platforms.
FINANCING STRUCTURES FOR PRIVATE CREDIT FUNDS
Our private credit team also represents private credit funds in their own financing arrangements (and financing to their SPVs), including subscription, NAV, hybrid, warehouse, and back-leverage facilities as well as repurchase arrangements. In particular, this includes utilizing collateralized loan obligation structures to access a broader universe of capital to fund the origination and/or investment in private credit assets. In addition, we represent fund sponsors in connection with credit facilities made to management companies, including for acquisition purposes.