MICHAEL BELSLEY

Michael D. Belsley is a partner at the law firm, Kirkland and Ellis. Michael’s practice deals with structuring, negotiating, and documenting a wide variety of complex business transactions in the private equity sector and he is the global head of Kirkland’s secondary market transactions practice. 

Michael’s practice involves structuring, negotiating, and documenting complex business transactions, including strategic and leveraged acquisitions, recapitalizations and divestitures, formation and governance of private equity funds (including primary investments in and secondary market sales of private equity fund interests), venture capital investments (start-up and later-stage), mezzanine debt financings, equity financings and corporate governance matters.

Michael regularly represents buyers and sellers, as well as market intermediaries, in their secondary market activities. His secondary market experience includes traditional portfolio sales, structured secondaries, synthetic secondaries (i.e., buy-ins and bundled secondary directs, as well as total return swaps), captive fund spin-outs, stapled secondary offerings, fund recapitalizations and restructurings, follow-on funding secondaries and orphaned asset sales in a variety of asset classes, including the venture capital, leveraged buy-out, special situations, and real estate sectors. Michael is a frequent lecturer, speaker, and panel moderator on private equity secondaries.

Michael also frequently represents both private equity fund sponsors (i.e., general partners) and investors in private equity fund formations, fund-level restructurings, and governance matters.

Representative buy-side clients include Adams Street Partners, Capital Dynamics, Coller Capital, Harbourvest, Landmark Partners, LGT, Liquid Realty Partners, Mesirow, Morgan Stanley, Northern Trust Corporation, Pantheon Ventures, Partners Group, Paul Capital Partners, and Virginia Retirement System.

Representative sell-side clients include American Capital, Bank of America, confidential Canadian public pension plan, Citigroup, Colgate University, Danske Private Equity, Ewing Kauffman Foundation, confidential Fortune 100 pension plan, confidential Japanese financial institution, confidential Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund, confidential Pacific-rim sovereign wealth fund, a leading property and casualty insurance company and Virginia Retirement System.

Michael counsels clients on transactions throughout the world, including the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe and the Pacific-rim.