Mayer Brown Adds Private Credit Partner From King & Spalding

Private credit lawyer Sheel Patel joined Mayer Brown as a partner on Thursday, the firm announced in a press release.

He will lead the private credit team in New York, arriving from King & Spalding, where he joined as a partner from Jones Day in early 2022.

Patel is second the partner to join the firm's private credit and leveraged finance practices this month following last week's the hiring of Blaise Latella from Winston & Strawn.

In an interview, Mayer Brown private credit leader and co-leader of global lending Matthew O'Meara said the recent hires are part of the firm's strategy of investing in all areas of private credit, a practice area O'Meara said he believes will continue to represent an increasing share of Big Law firms' revenue.

"Over the past few years we've seen explosive growth, a hockey-puck shot of growth into all of the different asset classes private credit covers," O'Meara said. "The fact that there's been a big shift from public market investing to private market investing—that's essentially what a private credit fund does."

O'Meara met Patel while the pair worked at Jones Day; O'Meara joined Mayer Brown's Chicago office in 2018.

Patel, whose practice includes "super big unitranches all the way down to $50 million facilities" and a "diverse client base all the way from mega private credit funds all the way down to special situation funds," said he chose Mayer Brown because of the firm's deep experience with private credit. "All of the segments that private credit shops have been getting into lately, Mayer Brown has been offering these services for years, not just on a national level but on a global basis," Patel said. "It seems like the perfect fit for where the asset class is going and where my clients are going with the funds they have."

Patel said the clients he's spoken to about the move were supportive. King & Spalding did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Patel's departure.

In addition to capitalizing on the general growth of private credit, O'Meara said Mayer Brown is well-positioned to help private credit funds take investments from insurance companies, a fairly recent phenomenon that requires strong regulatory expertise.

"Insurance companies are regulated entities in terms of how much capital they can invest in risk-weighted assets, so structuring deals in a way that meets regulatory restrictions on insurance companies while providing flexibility for private credit funds has been paramount," O'Meara said. "Mayer Brown folks have been a big part of that and of the narrative around these topics."

 

Reprinted with permission from the October 31st edition of The American Lawyer © 2024 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.