Kirkland Star Lawyer’s Antitrust Warning Sowed Seeds of His Own Exit

For the better part of 15 years at law firm Kirkland & Ellis, David Nemecek made a career out of exploiting loose lending agreements to perfect what would become a well-worn dance in the world of distressed corporate debt: Craft a debt overhaul too good for one set of a company’s creditors to pass up while leaving other creditors with scraps and buying precious time for the company’s private equity owners to avoid losses.

The maneuver made Nemecek a star among private equity firms stuck with hundreds of overleveraged and struggling companies — that is, until his own warnings about creditors’ response to those practices set the stage for his high-profile departure.