Our Leaders - Fund Finance Partners

Richard Wheelahan, III

Managing Director and Co-Founder

Since 2007, Richard has been advising fund sponsors and lenders, in both an advisory and principal capacity. In addition to co-founding FFP, Richard was the General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and a Director of a $3 billion asset manager investing debt and equity in lower middle-market companies. During his ten year tenure, Richard executed numerous capital markets initiatives on behalf of the firm’s investment vehicles and oversaw fund formation activity, developing comingled funds, SMA concepts, a NASDAQ listed BDC, and joint ventures. Richard also executed financings for the foregoing, including but not limited to subscription facilities, corporate and SPV revolvers, total return swaps, hybrid and NAV credit facilities, GP/asset manager lines of credit and securitizations of credit assets.

Richard’s breadth of asset management experience presents valuable, innovative expertise to fund sponsors dealing with fundraising, investor relations, compliance, financing, and portfolio management challenges and opportunities.

Richard began his career as an attorney with two large law firms, representing Fortune 500 companies, privately held entities and alternative asset managers with M&A and capital markets activities, and financial institutions in the execution of leveraged finance and securitization transactions.

Trey Burdick

Associate

As an associate, Trey works with FFP’s clients to structure and execute all types of fund and asset manager financing transactions. Trey has over 5 years of principal investing experience, both for private equity and private credit funds. Prior to joining FFP, Trey was a private credit investment professional at a $3 billion alternative asset manager investing in lower middle-market companies across a range of industries. Trey began his career at Lead Capital Partners, a private equity firm investing in healthcare companies in the lower middle-market. Trey’s asset management experience includes deal execution, portfolio management and investor relations.

Katina Cole

Marketing and Communications Director

Katina is the founder and CEO of M+E Fusion, LLC, a firm specializing in marketing, communications and events for the alternative asset management industry. Katina has overseen FFP’s communications and marketing strategies since FFP’s inception.

Katina brings 20 years of experience in marketing and brand management in the financial services industry to FFP. Katina is the director of marketing at Capitala Group, a $3 billion alternative asset management firm based in Charlotte, where she creates and oversees Capitala Group’s communications, social media strategy and corporate branding initiatives. In addition, Katina plans, budgets and executes all corporate meetings, events and investor conferences for the firm.

Prior to joining Capitala in 2013, Katina was Director of Marketing and Events for Frontier Capital. She graduated from Campbell University with a B.A. in Business Administration with a Major in Trust Fund Management and a Minor in Financial Planning.

Christine Alala

Consultant

Christine Alala has been a capital markets professional for over ten years and provides valuable debt capital markets advisory and execution expertise to FFP and its clients.

Prior to her work with FFP, Christine spent nearly 10 years in New York City working for global financial institution, Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. (“Cantor”). During her time with Cantor, she served as a member of the investment team with Cantor GGAM, L.P., (“GGAM”) a Cantor alternative investment vehicle and was responsible for evaluating and executing various acquisition, investment and development opportunities across the hospitality, real estate and gaming sectors. Christine played an integral role managing all aspects of the underwriting, due diligence and investment processes for highly structured debt and equity transactions, primarily in businesses with non-US assets and operations, representing billions of transaction value.

Prior to her roles on the buy-side, Christine served as a member of Cantor’s New York-based investment banking team, focusing on M&A and restructuring transactions across a variety of industries. As a member of Cantor’s investment banking team, she also oversaw the investment banking group’s analyst program, leading analyst recruitment and training efforts, and worked with Cantor’s Head of Banking to develop the first-ever investment banking summer internship program.

Before joining Cantor, Christine worked as a part of the investment banking group at Sheridan Road Financial, a Chicago-based financial advisory firm. Christine graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in International Relations and Mandarin Chinese.

Zac Barnett

Co-founder

In his nearly 20 years of experience as an attorney in the fund finance space, Zac is considered a pioneer of the industry. He has represented investment banks and fund sponsors on some of the largest, most complex fund financings, earning him annual recognition in Chambers. His broad range of experience in connection with loans to various real estate, private equity, secondaries, private credit, energy, infrastructure and hedge funds provides FFP with the knowledge necessary to guide fund sponsors through the process of securing various fund financings.

His deep understanding of fund formats has led to the development of creative fund finance structures including hybrid and NAV structures and fund of fund and fund of hedge fund facilities, private placements, open-end fund lending structures and several different variations of fund aftercare facilities.

As the Global Head of Mayer Brown’s Fund Finance practice and Co-Head of their Global Lending practice, Zac led over 500 fund financings including 350 individual subscription-backed credit facilities. Zac also co-founded the Annual Fund Finance Symposium, now administered by the Fund Finance Association.

Zac maintains a high-profile presence in the private equity and fund finance spheres. He is the pre-eminent writer in the space having authored more than 40 articles on various topics relating to the laws, regulations, and structures impacting the fund finance universe. He regulary moderates and sits on industry panels; his work has been cited in a number of prominent publications, from the Los Angeles Times to Bloomberg.

“smart, hard-working and personable – he is able to clearly outline the business issues and come to thoughtful compromises.”-Chambers

Our founders have collectively negotiated over 600 fund financings. FFP knows how to obtain the best documentary terms.

We understand how important facility capacity is, particularly toward the end of the fund’s commitment period. Borrowing base capacity preservation and maintenance is one of our specialties.

We negotiate flexible covenants and loosen events of default by leveraging the underwriting positives of your fund and platform strengths, making it certain that the facility will be available when it is most needed.

Finally, we streamline post-closing deliverables to reduce the administrative burden that these facilities impose.

Most fund sponsors rely on their existing bank and attorney relationships to finance their funds. We drive competitive innovation among the universe of lenders.

We’ve been on all sides of the transaction. We know lender asset class and collateral preferences. We know their pain points when it comes to underwriting, covenants, pricing and post-closing obligations.

We are also familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of the particular law firms in this space. We manage bank and fund counsel, ensuring they remain focused and on budget.

Running an efficient and effective loan process demands an understanding of the marketplace. Whether that’s knowing which lenders include certain investors in their borrowing base or whether they have true NAV underwriting capabilities, FFP can quickly locate the best capital source for your fund and investment strategy.

We’ve worked with every lender in the space and even designed some of their credit underwriting criteria. We’ve executed on every product and even invented a few of them. You know your investment strategy – we know how to find the best financing.

FFP does the heavy lifting by identifying and then removing potential stumbling blocks in the fund structure, constituent documents and side letters while preserving maximum facility optionality/flexibility.

We save you time by locating the appropriate capital sources, drafting and negotiating term sheets with various lenders through a curated auction process. We then review and comment on all facility documents and coordinate seamlessly among outside counsel and the lender, ensuring you execute on time, every time.