Sources & Methodology
Sources used
| Source | What it gives | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Kirkland & Ellis press releases (kirkland.com/news) | Fund-close announcements naming K&E as formation counsel | Selective — K&E doesn't publish every engagement |
| K&E representative matters / practice pages | Curated client lists in fund formation | Not exhaustive |
| SEC EDGAR — Form ADV | Sponsor-level fund inventory (Schedule D) | No legal-counsel field; doesn't tell us who formed the vehicle |
| SEC EDGAR — BDC 10-K / 10-Q | Schedule of investments — full borrower list per BDC, quarterly | Only public BDCs (subset of K&E credit clients) |
| PEI / Private Debt Investor / Bloomberg news (free articles) | Fund-close coverage often quotes K&E | Paywalls limit depth |
| Companies House (UK) | UK-domiciled fund vehicle registrations | Doesn't link to legal counsel directly |
| Fund/sponsor websites | Some publish portfolio company lists | Most do not for credit funds |
| Wikipedia | Sponsor overviews, BDC summaries | Secondary source — verify |
Methodology
- Sponsor seed list — start with private credit GPs known to use K&E for fund formation work (publicly-disclosed engagements over the last decade).
- Per-sponsor validation — for each, find at least one explicit "K&E advised on formation of [Fund]" press release, K&E matter listing, or industry report citing K&E. Mark confidence.
- Fund enumeration — list named vehicles, vintage, jurisdiction, AUM where K&E is publicly named.
- Portfolio company extraction —
- BDCs: pull latest 10-K/10-Q schedule of investments from EDGAR.
- Non-BDC funds: mine deal-announcement press releases and sponsor websites for "[Fund] provided financing to [Company]".
- Consolidation — dedupe across funds (same company often borrows from multiple funds), tag with sector + (where cheap) stress signals.
Known gaps / things this won't catch
- Separately managed accounts (SMAs) — most large credit sponsors run SMAs alongside commingled funds. SMAs are even less public than commingled funds. Out of scope unless K&E publicly disclosed.
- Funds K&E didn't form but is still close to the sponsor on — by user's design, these are excluded (the K&E filter is the introduction path, not a quality proxy).
- CLO equity / mezz CLO funds — borderline. If structured as private credit, in. If syndicated CLO market, out.
- Sub-advised funds where the sub-adviser is the K&E client but the fund vehicle was formed by a different lawyer — judgment call. Documented per case.
- Long tail of European mid-market credit shops — K&E London formation activity is real but less-publicly-disclosed than US. Expect lower coverage.
Confidence rubric
- H (high): Named in K&E press release, K&E matter listing, or fund-close article quoting K&E as formation counsel.
- M (medium): K&E represents the sponsor on adjacent matters + industry-public-knowledge that K&E is their fund formation counsel of record.
- L (low): Inferred from circumstantial evidence; should be checked with the K&E fund formation partner before warm-intro.