Kirkland & Ellis Launches Integrated Real Assets Practice Group

Kirkland & Ellis announced the formation of its integrated Real Assets Practice Group, combining the Firm’s Real Estate, Infrastructure, Energy and Minerals/Mining practices to align with client needs and industry trends. The combined group includes more than 600 lawyers across Kirkland’s global offices.

“We’ve been seeing clients integrate real estate, infrastructure, energy and digital assets in increasingly sophisticated ways,” said Jon A. Ballis, Chairman of Kirkland’s Executive Committee. “Our teams already have been operating collaboratively across these areas for the past few years, but now bringing these practices together under the “real assets” umbrella will formalize our approach — highly coordinated advice across capital raising, structuring, financing, development and governance — particularly for assets with long time horizons, regulatory considerations and complex stakeholder dynamics.”

Surging demand in digital infrastructure and a desire to organize practices similar to its clients’ businesses were key drivers behind Kirkland formalizing operations under the real assets umbrella, but a cross-disciplinary approach has been central to Kirkland’s real assets work for many years.

“Kirkland has always adopted a team approach to serve our clients and that is exactly the approach we continue to take now within real assets – it is the best way to create meaningful value for our clients,” said Andrew Calder, a member of Kirkland’s Executive Committee.

In 2025, Kirkland led more than 615 real assets deals worth approximately $650 billion. The Firm has also led some of the most complex and high-profile real assets transactions in history, including:

• Brookfield Infrastructure Partners’ $30 billion, first-of-its-kind joint venture with Intel Corporation to fund Intel’s under-construction semiconductor fabrication facility in Chandler, Arizona. The deal was highlighted in a State of the Union address as a milestone achievement in manufacturing for the tech industry.
• GLP’s $18.7 billion sale of its U.S. logistics business to Blackstone — the largest private real estate transaction globally.
• Constellation Energy’s $26.6 billion acquisition of Calpine, creating the largest independent power generator in the U.S.
• CPP Investments’ acquisition, as part of a KKR-led consortium, of an equity interest in Sempra Infrastructure Partners, which valued the company at $31.7 billion.
• KKR’s, as part of a consortium including Global Infrastructure Partners, acquisition of CyrusOne Inc. (NASDAQ: CONE), a premier global data center REIT, in a transaction valued at $15 billion.
• Ares Management Corporation’s (NYSE: ARES) merger with Whitestone REIT (NYSE: WSR), whose portfolio includes high-quality, convenience-focused retail properties, in transaction valued at approximately $1.7 billion.

Kirkland is also an established leader for data center-related work. The Firm led many of the foundational transactions shaping the space, which has rapidly evolved from relatively modest projects into gigawatt-scale data center campuses backed by billions of dollars in capital.

In the last five years, Kirkland lawyers have advised more than 140 unique sponsors and developers on over 450 data center transactions, and in 2025 alone, the Firm advised on more than $169 billion in M&A and joint venture deals and over $81 billion in financings related to data centers.

Recent examples include representing:

• AI Infrastructure Partnership, MGX and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners in the $40 billion acquisition of Aligned Data Centers — the largest ever acquisition in the digital infrastructure space.
• Consortium of Global Infrastructure Partners and EQT in its $33.4 billion acquisition of AES. AES is the largest supplier of clean energy to corporations globally, including 11.8 GW of signed agreements to date to supply power to major technology firms.
• Blue Owl Capital in its $27 billion joint venture with Meta Platforms to develop a data center campus in Louisiana.

“Each transaction presents novel issues, and the landscape is constantly changing, which really necessitates having experts in all of the areas – M&A, real estate, financing, power, project development, regulatory, intellectual property, funds and more – under one roof and working together in total lockstep to ensure advice to our clients is aligned to how the market continues to mature,” said John Pitts, a Kirkland energy and infrastructure partner and member of the Firm’s Executive Committee.

The Firm also has unmatched depth and breadth in real estate private equity transactions generally. Kirkland has always been situated at the center of real estate private equity, which has allowed the Firm to provide differentiated, 360-degree view advice in the global private equity, private credit and digital infrastructure markets. The real estate team brings particular strength at the cutting edge of not only digital infrastructure and data center investments, but also large-scale portfolio acquisitions, M&A of real estate-based businesses, and borrower- and lender-side real estate financings, as well as sponsor-driven recapitalizations and restructurings.

Kevin Ehrhart, a Kirkland real estate partner said: “Meeting clients where they are is core to how Kirkland operates across market cycles, asset classes and deal structures. Kirkland has been involved at every stage of the growth of real estate private equity and the digital infrastructure evolution. Integrating our real assets offering is a natural next step in continuing to deliver cutting-edge solutions as the industry continues to grow.”