A second appearance in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 follows an eventful year for Matt Merkle, both in terms of high-value deals and headline-grabbing moves. Merkle was one of four Kirkland & Ellis partners to move to Paul Weiss over the summer. While debt finance powerhouse Neel Sachdev led the team switch, it was Merkle’s prowess in the capital markets world that also turned heads.
Learning his craft at Kirkland, Merkle has witnessed the shift in the high-yield market from bank-led deals to those spearheaded by private equity clients. As such, he is in prime position to adapt to this evolving, and lucrative, market. He closed a number of deals in a challenging 2023, including for Investindustrial and wine bottle business Guala Closures on a €350m offering of high yield bonds, plus Merlin Entertainments in a €700m refinancing. Now in his new role as Paul Weiss’s head of European capital markets, Merkle has a new challenge ahead of him – to build out a team.