Leah Neilly

About Leah Neilly

Leah Neilly is a Legal Consultant in the Private Funds and Secondaries Group.

Leah has longstanding experience across private equity, private credit and infrastructure fund formation (including managed accounts), LP primary commitments into funds, LP co-investments, LP-led and GP-led secondaries, and direct private equity transactions. Leah also worked on a number of 40 Act Fund investments on behalf institutional investors including pension funds and family offices.

Prior to joining Freshfields, Leah worked at leading secondaries firm, Coller Capital, and abrdn Private Equity (now Patria GPMS) where she worked in the Global Private Markets team, focusing on all aspects of private equity, private credit and infrastructure fund formation and fund investments, co-investments and secondaries.

Leah plays both a legal and strategic client-focused role working within our PFS team, working closely with our key clients to ensure Freshfields delivers a tailored service, adding both legal and commercial value.

Recent work

Both during and prior to joining Freshfields, Leah’s experience includes advising on the following transactions:

• Fund formation counsel on behalf of both abrdn and Coller in the raising of a series of secondary funds, co-investment funds, infrastructure funds, and separately managed accounts;

• More than 25 LP primary commitments into leading European & US buyout and growth equity managers, including several first time funds such as software manager Maguar Capital;

• abrdn on its LP primary commitment into Expedition Growth Capital 1 and on its LP co-investment alongside Expedition into Dougs;

• abrdn, as lead investor in Titanbay’s Series A funding round, alongside

• Motive Partners and FNZ;

• Secondary investment into the CFC (leading, high growth cyber insurance platform) continuation fund alongside two of Europe’s leading private equity firms, Vitruvian and EQT;

• Secondary investment into the Polyplus (high growth cell & gene therapy specialist business) continuation fund alongside ArchiMed and incoming investor Warburg Pincus;

• Secondary investment into a continuation fund into Qonto, one of Europe’s leading neo banks, alongside a leading French venture manager;

• Direct growth investment into the Series D fundraising for SignalAI, the leading global decision augmentation company;

  Secondary investment into a continuation fund focused on three high growth businesses (e-commerce, telecoms & online job bulletins) alongside leading growth investor, Horizon Capital (Ukraine);

• Co-investments into several software companies backed by leading software focused manager HgCapital;

• LP tender offers in relation to two India / US focused venture and growth managers.