Kirkland & Ellis LLP is pleased to announce that Ranesh Ramanathan has joined the Firm as a corporate partner in the Boston office. He will focus on debt finance, distressed/special situations, alternative investments and credit fund transactions.
Mr. Ramanathan is well known in the credit, private equity and legal communities from his in-house experience at Bain Capital since 2008. He has been deputy general counsel at Bain Capital and general counsel to Bain Capital’s Credit and Public Equity businesses since 2011 and he was promoted to managing director in 2015. Previously, he was the general counsel of Citi Private Equity and associate general counsel of Citi Alternative Investments at Citigroup.
“Ranesh is a talented finance and private investments lawyer with a valuable and unique perspective from his many years in-house at Bain Capital and Citi,” said Jeffrey C. Hammes, Chairman of Kirkland’s Global Management Executive Committee. “His leadership advising on a broad range of complex transactions will bolster our debt finance practice, in particular our special situations practice acting for credit managers, and benefit our global private equity client base.”
Mr. Ramanathan has extensive experience negotiating, structuring and managing complex transactions globally, including acquiring diverse multijurisdictional portfolios of assets and extracting entire business units from distressed sellers. His experience has been global in nature from the U.S. to Europe, Asia and Australia. As global general counsel of Bain Capital Credit, Mr. Ramanathan has been integrally involved in the dynamic expansion of the business, from the variety of new fund types to the growth in its international investment footprint to its expansion into new investment areas. His almost 15 years of in-house experience at large global institutions will bring a multidisciplinary and client-focused perspective aimed at solving client problems. He received a J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1999 and a B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1993.
“Ranesh has a unique understanding of the in-house counsel’s perspective because of his experience as general counsel of one of the largest credit managers in the world. That perspective, coupled with his extensive worldwide deal experience, will help us better serve our clients, who have growing needs in their increasingly complex businesses. Ranesh will fit seamlessly into the Firm, augment and deepen our talent in some key areas and strengthen our practice,” said Linda K. Myers, a partner in Kirkland’s Debt Finance Practice Group and member of the Firm’s Global Management Executive Committee.
“The last 10 years at Bain Capital have been an incredible experience, both professionally and personally,” said Mr. Ramanathan. “I’m also very excited about the next chapter in my career, getting back to private practice at Kirkland’s growing Boston office, and contributing to enhancing the Firm’s finance offering for credit managers. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with Bain Capital Credit as a client at a very active and exciting time alongside my new Kirkland colleagues, many of whom I’ve known and worked closely with for several years.”
Mr. Ramanathan’s appointment follows several recent senior hires within Kirkland’s Boston office, which includes more than 40 lawyers focused on transactional areas of practice: M&A/private equity, debt finance, investment funds and tax. Earlier this year, Kirkland welcomed Christian Atwood, formerly co-chair of the private equity group and a member of the executive committee at Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, and Scott Jones, Kirkland’s first tax lawyer in Boston, to the office.
