Claire McDaid
Partner, Corporate & Financial Services
Claire McDaid is a partner in the Corporate & Financial Services Department and the Private Equity Practice Group in London. She focuses on private equity and corporate M&A transactions, advising principally financial sponsors, family offices, corporates and strategic investors on a variety of cross-border investment transactions, including leveraged buyouts, complex carve-outs, club deals, growth equity, recapitalisations and liquidity transactions. Claire has particular experience in the distressed and turnaround sphere, advising a variety of stakeholders in such transactions across Europe.
Claire has worked across a broad range of sectors worldwide, including business services, industrial, financial services, renewable energy and technology and regularly acts for PAI Partners, Insight Partners, JC Flowers, Freshstream, Davidson Kempner and Atlas Holdings amongst others.
Claire is recognised by Chambers UK (2024), Chambers Global (2024) and The Legal 500 UK (2023) for high value private equity transactions and is named among the leading female transactional lawyers in the UK in IFLR1000 Women Leaders 2021 and 2022 Guides. She is also recognised in IFLR1000 (2023) and Best Lawyers (2023) for Private Equity and M&A.
Experience
- EMG, a portfolio company of PAI Partners, on its combination with Gravity Media, creating one of the world’s largest broadcast technology and production companies (2024)
- Freshstream on its investment in MCR Group, a rapidly growing outsourced services company based in Ireland (2023)
- Davidson Kempner on the sale of Nature Energy, a natural gas distributor, to Shell for approx. $2 billion (€ 1.9 billion) (2022)
- CM Group, a portfolio company of Insight Partners, on its merger with Cheetah Digital (2022)
- Freshstream on the sale of leading UK holiday resort business Away Resorts to CVC Capital Partners (2021)
- Insight Partners in its investment in Dext (2021)
- Freshstream in its acquisition of Themis (2021)
- Davidson Kempner in its investment in Start Campus (2021)
- Insight Partners in its investment in Exclaimer Group (2020)
- Atlas Holdings in its acquisition of global contractor Permasteelisa (2020)
- Freshstream in its acquisition of UK holiday park operator Away Resorts (2020)
- PAI Partners, the owners of StellaGroup, in StellaGroup’s acquisition of the shutters & awnings platform of CRH (2019)
- PAI Partners in its acquisition of World Freight Company International (2018)
Credentials
Education
London Business School, Executive Corporate Finance Course, 2006 College of Law, PGLP, 2002 University of Edinburgh, LLB (Hons), 1999