Vanessa Xu

She's a great lawyer who is very commercial and gets the right outcome for clients.” - Chambers UK, 2025

Vanessa Xu is a debt finance partner in the London office of Kirkland & Ellis International LLP. Vanessa advises financial sponsors and borrowers on leveraged acquisition finance and other complex financing transactions, particularly leveraged buyouts with a multijurisdictional component. She has extensive experience in structuring and executing sponsor-backed leveraged buyouts in the European market at all levels of the capital structure of these transactions, including bank/bond transactions, “cov-lite” and “cov-loose” loans, European or US TLB, second lien debt, unitranche financing, PIK instruments, ARR financing and debt restructuring.

External Recognition

• Chambers UK (2025): Ranked for Banking & Finance: Sponsors
• Legal 500 (2025): Recognised as a “Recommended Lawyer” for Acquisition Finance
• Legal Business (2023): Listed as “One to Watch” in “Alphas Revisited: Finance Stars”
• Legal Week (2019): Named in its “40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Private Equity”
• Legal Week (2018): Listed in “Rising stars: the next generation of City private equity talent”