Paul Hastings has hired the former co-head of Cahill Gordon & Reindel’s private credit practice, Peter Williams, as it moves to capitalise on an industry that has grown into a $2trn market.
Williams joined Cahill in 2024, having been a managing director at KKR, and brings extensive experience structuring and executing private credit transactions across the capital structure.
He works with private credit lenders with transactions ranging from jumbo acquisition financings for clients including Blackstone Credit and Insurance, Blue Owl and KKR Credit to middle market financings for clients such as Silver Point Capital and the Credit and Structured Solutions team at Francisco Partners. He also advises digital asset firms like FalconX on bespoke lending transactions involving digital currencies.
Paul Hastings' chair, Frank Lopez, said Williams would help the firm to gain ground at the top of the finance market, adding that his experience and long-standing client relationships "will strengthen our position from sponsor-backed acquisition financings to traditional bank lending as well as with opportunistic private credit lenders".
Williams' hire continues the buildout of Paul Hastings' global finance practice, which has tripled in size and revenue over the past five years.
It follows the firm opening an office in Charlotte – now the second-largest banking centre in the US after New York – earlier this year with funds finance teams hired from Haynes Boone and Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft.
The firm also hired an eight-partner team comprising more than 25 lawyers from Vinson & Elkins in Texas in 2024, having made a splash in London back in 2022 when it recruited a 15-lawyer Latham & Watkins team led by Latham's former global banking co-chair and the former co-chairs of its London finance department.
The firm has also boosted its New York finance practice over the past few years with hires including Latham partners Corey Wright and Lisa Collier, themselves former Cahill lawyers, as well as Cahill partner trio Marc Lashbrook, Josh Zelig and David Barash.
Paul Hastings' splashy hiring strategy, which has extended to its M&A, litigation and restructuring practices as well as finance, appears to be paying off. Bloomberg Law reported the firm grew revenue 20% to $2.7bn in 2025, eclipsing the average 14.1% growth among the top 25 US law firms, of which Paul Hastings is one.
"Paul Hastings has built a leading private credit and broader global finance platform, with strong momentum across the market,” Williams said. “The firm’s relationships with leading direct lenders and investment banks – combined with its strength across all areas touching credit, including infrastructure and projects, asset-backed and structured credit, real estate and restructuring and special situations – align with my practice."
A Cahill spokesperson commented: “We thank Peter Williams for his service to the firm’s clients and wish him well in his new endeavour.”
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