Kirkland & Ellis Strengthens Debt Finance Practice with Addition of Leading Attorney Stephen Lucas
Kirkland & Ellis International LLP is pleased to announce that Stephen Lucas will be joining the Firm’s London office as a partner in the Debt Finance Practice Group.
Mr. Lucas represents sponsors, financial institutions, funds and corporations on financings including leveraged finance, structured debt and restructurings.
“Stephen is widely recognized as among the top finance lawyers in London. He is a brilliant, hard-working lawyer and strategic thinker, and a significant addition to our already strong and very active European debt finance group,” said Jeffrey C. Hammes, Chairman of Kirkland’s Global Management Executive Committee.
Mr. Lucas joins Kirkland from the London office of Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, and has acted on a number of the largest leveraged buyout situations this year. He is top ranked by a number of legal directories, including Chambers, which referred to him as “one of the best lawyers in the City” and “phenomenally clever, with an excellent understanding of the broader market, and a technical brilliance.” He was the highest ranked finance lawyer in Chambers’ 2013 list of the UK’s top 100 business lawyers. The Times also called him a “star player” following his work on the restructuring of Schaeffler.
Mr. Lucas holds an LLB (First Class), LLM (Distinction) and PhD from University College London, and an LLM (Fulbright Scholar) from Harvard Law School.
Kirkland’s Debt Finance Practice Group in London is widely acknowledged as one of the leading practices for private equity sponsor side financings in Europe. Recent deals include advising Advent International and Bain Capital in the DKK 17 billion acquisition of Nets Holding, advising Apollo, TowerBrook and York on Monier’s EUR 565 million bank and bond refinancing, and advising CVC on the EUR 2.3 billion financing of its acquisition of ista International.
Kirkland & Ellis LLP (www.kirkland.com) is a 1,600-attorney law firm representing global clients in complex corporate, restructuring and tax, litigation and dispute resolution/arbitration, and intellectual property and technology matters. The Firm has offices in London, Beijing, Chicago, Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Munich, New York, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Shanghai and Washington, D.C.
