Kelly Mellecker, an attorney in the structured finance and infrastructure financing space, has joined Kirkland & Ellis as a partner in its structured finance and structured private credit practice, the company's latest addition in building out that practice.
Mellecker will focus on a range of securitizations, structured private credit deals and private placements by advising sponsors, credit funds, initial purchasers, institutional investors, investment banks and borrowers, Kirkland said in a statement. Mellecker joins Kirkland from Goldman Sachs, where her last position was managing director, according to LinkedIn.
At Goldman Sachs, Kirkland said, Mellecker pioneered the non-contracted fiber-to-the-home securitization asset class. She brought first-time issuers such as Metronet, Frontier and Ziply to market, and led other telecom and digital infrastructure structured finance deals.
"Kelly … 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," Jon A. Ballis, chairman of Kirkland's executive committee.
Aside from securitizations and structured private credit, the group has structured some of the industry's most highly complex and groundbreaking transactions across a range of deals, including securitizations, hybrid structured-leveraged credit facilities,
Aside from Mellecker, Kirkland had appointed Michael Urschel as a partner in the same practice in May. Since Urschel's hire, the practice has grown to 22 attorneys, in a sign of its dedication to that area of business. Kirkland's debt finance practice is the largest in the world, staffed more than 300 dedicated lawyers and serving more than 500 private equity clients.
