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Kevin Rubinstein is a partner in the New York office of Crowell & Moring. He regularly represents investment banks, private equity funds, hedge funds, and other financial institutions in connection with a variety of direct lending transactions, as well as investments in syndicated loans in the secondary market. Kevin has experience representing both borrowers and lenders in a broad range of debt financings, including senior secured, first and second lien, unsecured, subordinated, and acquisition financings.

Crowell was proud to serve as a sponsor of the recent New York University School of Law symposium on “Charting the Future of Litigation Finance.” The symposium brought together over 200 leading lawyers, academics, policymakers, and judges for an engaging discussion on the regulatory and policy issues surrounding this rapidly growing area of finance. Crowell partner Kevin Rubinstein spoke on “Nonattorneys Enter the Room: Financier Control and Law Firm Ownership.”

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Crowell was pleased to host and sponsor Opus Connect’s recent NYC Private Debt Roundtable. The event drew a group of private debt leaders for engaging and thoughtful discussion around some of the key challenges private debt firms face today, and the emerging opportunities. The conversation covered everything from new technologies shaping the space to how firms are evolving their strategies in response to a changing environment.

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Unitranche financing began as a middle-market product, tracing its origins to the days of recovery from the global credit crisis. The credit markets re-opened with an explosion of available capital from traditional lenders, business development companies and other direct lenders. With an increasing supply of capital, leverage shifted to borrowers and private equity, allowing them to better dictate the terms and conditions of their loan facilities. With the greater prevalence of so-called “covenant-lite” loans, also came the exponential growth of the unitranche market. What began as a financing structure most often used for loans of less than $50 million, unitranche loans are now regularly used for financings exceeding $1 billion, and in 2021, up to $3 billion.  A unitranche facility combines the benefits of multi-tranche debt regularly found in the syndicated lending markets (i.e., the ability to raise funds from lenders with different risk profiles and return expectations), with those of speed and certainty that are a hallmark of the private lending community. In its simplest form, unitranche facilities are structured using a single-tier, combing the senior and junior components of syndicated loans into one loan. Whereas a syndicated loan may require distinct grants of senior and junior liens on collateral to multiple lending groups, a unitranche uses a single lien to secure the entire facility. The benefits to the borrower are obvious: it is faced with a single term loan: one set of principal and interest payments, a single package of covenants to monitor, and a uniform list of defaults to avoid. Layering on the advantage of a single agent, a unitranche facility greatly streamlines loan administration from the borrower’s perspective.

Continue Reading The Continued Growth of Unitranche Financing