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Danelle Le Cren

Partner and Head of U.S. Banking Group, New York

"My practice includes advising clients on a wide range of U.S. financial products with a focus on the Americas and Europe; I offer clients expert, practical and commercially focused advice that helps them achieve their goals."

Overview

Professional experience

Education and qualifications

Overview

Danelle heads the U.S. Banking practice and is the US representative on our Partnership Board. She has extensive experience in advising clients in complex domestic and cross-border finance transactions, including leveraged buy-outs and other acquisition financings, general corporate financings, fund financings, asset finance transactions, infrastructure and project finance transactions, structured and tax-based financings, debt restructurings and work outs. 

Danelle is the lead U.S. relationship partner for several of the firm’s major banking clients. She is ranked in Chambers USA 2026 for Banking & Finance, and legal directories have noted that Danelle is “very knowledgeable, commercial and responsive” and “highly professional and goes the 'extra mile' to provide technical legal as well as practical, strategic advice to the highest standard.”

Highlights of Danelle’s experience include:
  • Takeda Pharmaceutical Company: advising as borrower on the US$30.85bn bridge loan agreement for its US$62bn recommended offer for Shire plc – the largest acquisition financing in Asia, and the largest acquisition financing by a Japanese company. We also advised on subsequent take-out facilities.
  • Volkswagen: advising on complex financing structures in connection with its US$5.8bn investment and a proposed 50-50 electric vehicle technology joint venture with EV manufacturer, Rivian.

  • Nova Biomedical Corporation: advising the joint lead arrangers and joint book bookrunners on the term loan B financing to support the acquisition by Advanced Instruments LLC, a Patricia Industries portfolio company of Nova Biomedical Corporation.

  • Holcim Ltd: advising Holcim Ltd. on implementing a US$4.6bn bridge facility and US$2bn revolving credit facility for its 100% spinoff of its North American business, Amrize Ltd.

  • LNG facilities in Mexico: advising the arrangers in connection with: (i) a US$850m Term Loan B financing and (ii) a US$750m project financing.

  • OYO: advising the arrangers on the US$660m first lien Term Loan B for OYO, the first Indian public company to raise indebtedness in the US Term Loan B market, to be used to refinance OYO’s existing indebtedness

  • Global Brands Group: advising the secured lenders in the Group’s multi-jurisdictional wind-down, implemented through chapter 11 cases, a UK administration, and other insolvency proceedings in Europe and Asia.
  • Ports America Group, Inc.: advising the banks on the refinancing of the largest container terminal operator in North America.
  • National Grid North America Inc.: advising on its US$400m bilateral term loan facility provided by Bank of America, N.A., as lender, to The Brooklyn Union Gas Company, a National Grid company. 
  • Trumbull Energy Center: advising Tor Investment Management (Hong Kong) Limited, Sixth Street Partners LLC, and Corbin Capital Partners, L.P. as the lenders on a mezzanine credit facility for the US$1.2bn project financing of Trumbull Energy Center, a 940 MW natural gas-fired electric combined-cycle power generation facility in Ohio.

Professional experience

Danelle is heavily involved in the work of the unglobalcompact.org, alongside partner Tom Shropshire, supporting the initiative for general counsel to play a greater role in advancing corporate sustainability.

Danelle has written extensively on leveraged and acquisition finance subjects. Her articles include:

Translating High Yield to Leveraged Loans: Avoiding Covenant Convergence Confusion, Lending & Secured Finance 2016

Term Loan B’s Problems at the Border, International Financial Law Review, May 2015

Education and qualifications

Danelle completed a bachelor of commerce at the University of Otago, New Zealand and a bachelor of laws at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.