K&E is a clear, dominant force in terms of law firms working in the PE secondary market. It's the largest and most experienced team on Wall Street doing these transactions and, given their very large team, they remain able to provide high-touch counsel to clients, notwithstanding how active they are in the market.
- Private Equity: Secondaries Respondent, Chambers USA, 2024
Kirkland’s Investment Funds Practice Group includes a market-leading liquidity solutions practice, which advises on a broad spectrum of transactions in the secondary market. For more than a decade, Kirkland has been at the forefront of the evolution of the liquidity solutions space in the U.S., Europe and Asia and continues to benefit from a significant ‘early mover’ advantage in each market as they mature.
Our experienced practice brings together a deep knowledge of alternative fund products with an integrated and multidisciplinary team of attorneys to advise fund sponsors, buyers (including lead investors and syndicate participants in GP-led liquidity transactions), sellers, management teams, financial advisors and fairness opinion providers. Year after year in the U.S., Europe and Asia, Kirkland significantly surpasses other law firms in secondaries market volume (source: Private Equity International), having advised clients on a large proportion of all transactions executed to date.
As the secondaries market continues to grow, we built a platform to meet that demand with more than 60 dedicated secondaries attorneys and more than 620 investment funds attorneys in the U.S., Europe and Asia focused on investment funds and a global platform of attorneys in every discipline including tax, regulatory and M&A. Our large, global secondaries platform benefits from Kirkland’s vast presence in the market – Private Equity International reports that Kirkland has represented 84 percent of the preeminent private equity firms in the world, unlocking a vast perspective and understanding of the market, and allowing us to provide sophisticated legal advice and offer novel solutions across a wide range of strategies and fund products. Our platform is further enhanced by an extensive global network of contacts and proprietary databases that enable us to provide clients with timely market insights.
Kirkland’s Investment Funds attorneys have extensive experience innovating and executing a broad spectrum of liquidity transactions including:
- continuation fund transactions
- fund recapitalizations and restructurings
- strip sales
- structured and synthetic secondaries
- traditional LP portfolio sales
- fund-level and GP-level preferred equity investments
- NAV facilities
- tender offers
- investments in fund sponsors
Kirkland is proud to be a leader in the secondaries market internationally. In 2024, Kirkland acted on a substantial proportion of transactions in the secondary market across all key deal types. Kirkland was involved in 288 transactions, involving more than $172 billion of transaction value globally.
