Alena Q. Thomas

ALENA THOMAS focuses her practice on leveraged finance transactions, representing private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies, public and private companies, and lenders. She has extensive experience across acquisition financings, cross-border transactions, debt restructurings, and complex liability management over a range of industries and financing structures, including first-lien, second-lien, unitranche, asset-based, recurring-revenue, back-leverage, and high-yield.

Prior to joining Sidley, Alena worked as a finance associate and served on the Associates Committee at another top-tier international law firm, and founded and built a SaaS-based contract management system for companies with complex debt documents.

Alena’s experience includes the following representative matters:

Debt Finance Matters

• Clearlake Capital Group and its portfolio companies in various matters, including the financing aspects of:
  • Their US$7.7 billion take-private of Dun & Bradstreet, a global provider of business decisioning data and analytics.
  • The acquisition by Victory Live, a technology platform focused on sports and entertainment, event management, data, and ticketing software, in its acquisition of Logitix from ZMC.
  • The acquisition by DigiCert, a leading provider of digital trust, of Vercara from Golden Gate Capital and GIC.
  • Their US$3 billion take-private of Endurance International Group, a leading provider of cloud-based platform solutions, involving the simultaneous combination of Endurance Web Presence and Web.com Group, Inc., and recapitalization of Constant Contact, a leading provider of cloud-based digital marketing software for small businesses, in connection with its separation from Endurance International Group.
• Nordic Capital in connection with the financing aspects of its acquisition of Anaqua, the leading provider of innovation and intellectual property management technology solutions and services.
• Funds managed by affiliates of Apollo in the financing aspects of their acquisition of the Environmental Services business of GFL Environmental Inc.
• Elliott, in the financing aspects of its US$16.5 billion acquisition of Citrix, a cloud computing and virtualization technology company.
• Clayton, Dubilier & Rice in various matters, including the financing aspects of:
  • Their US$4 billion take-private of Covetrus, a global animal health technology and services company.
  • Their US$3.7 billion acquisition of a majority stake in the industrial businesses of Roper Technologies, an operator of market-leading businesses that design and develop vertical software and application-specific products.
  • Their US$7 billion acquisition of Focus Financial Partners, a national wealth management, business management, and related financial services company.
• Various other sponsors and their portfolio companies in leveraged buyout and private company financings, including: American Securities; Apax Partners; CC Capital; Cerberus; Kelso & Company; KKR; and Warburg Pincus.

Restructuring Matters

• Sungard Availability Services and its affiliates in the financing aspects of its Chapter 11 cases and exit financing, which received Chapter 11 approval in less than 20 hours.
• An ad hoc group of noteholders in the financing aspects of the Chapter 11 cases of Quorum Health Care Services and its affiliates and junior DIP financing.
• Ascena Retail Group, Inc. and its affiliates in the financing aspects of its Chapter 11 cases and exit financing.

Some of the above matters were handled prior to joining Sidley.