Kelly Mellecker Joins Kirkland & Ellis’ Growing Structured Finance and Structured Private Credit Practice
Kirkland & Ellis announced today that Kelly Mellecker, an accomplished attorney and thought leader in the structured finance and infrastructure financing space, will join the Firm as a partner in the Debt Finance Group.
“Kelly has an outstanding reputation for leading complex securitization transactions, and she brings a multifaceted perspective gained as both a lawyer and investment banker,” said Jon A. Ballis, Chairman of Kirkland’s Executive Committee. “She will add tremendous value for our clients as demand for structured finance products continues to grow across private equity, credit, infrastructure, fund finance and other core areas of our transactional practice.”
Ms. Mellecker’s practice will focus on advising sponsors, credit funds, initial purchasers, institutional investors, investment banks and borrowers on a broad array of structured finance transactions including securitizations, structured private credit and private placements.
She joins Kirkland from Goldman Sachs, where she was a managing director. At Goldman, Ms. Mellecker led telecom and digital infrastructure structured finance and pioneered the non-contracted fiber-to-the-home securitization asset class, structuring deals for first-time issuers such as Metronet, Frontier and Ziply. Prior to Goldman, Ms. Mellecker was an attorney at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and represented issuers and sponsors, as well as investment banks, in connection with some of the most high-profile securitizations in the market, including Wendy’s, Dunkin Brands, Dine Brands, Diamond Communications and Coinstar. Ms. Mellecker has also served as an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School teaching a deals seminar on secured transactions.
“I’m excited to be returning to the practice of law on the incredibly dynamic Kirkland platform and working together with our growing team to build the top practice for complex structured finance and structured private credit transactions,” said Ms. Mellecker. “My experience as an investment banker will also lend a fresh perspective to funds and issuers using structured finance tactically in their capital structures.”
Kirkland announced in May that Michael Urschel joined as a partner to help build the Firm’s Structured Finance & Structured Private Credit Practice. Since then, the practice has more than doubled in size, going from nine to 22 attorneys. The team has extensive experience structuring highly complex and first-of-their-kind transactions across the full range of structured financings, including hybrid structured/leveraged credit facilities, securitizations, structured private credit and private placement transactions, with expertise across a wide range of industries including whole business, energy, digital infrastructure, auto, equipment, trade receivables and consumer loans.
With more than 300 dedicated lawyers, Kirkland’s debt finance practice is the largest in the world and serves more than 500 private equity clients. According to Bloomberg, Debtwire and Refinitiv, Kirkland consistently handles more transactions for borrowers than any other law firm and, for the last five years, has led the market in U.S. borrower transactions. The practice is recognized by Chambers & Partners, Legal 500 and other publications for its work on complex, high-profile transactions; exceptional commercial understanding of U.S. and international financing markets; and excellence in client service.
