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 (2025), Chambers Global (2024) and The Legal 500 UK (2025) for high value private equity transactions and is named among the leading female transactional lawyers in the UK in the IFLR1000 Women Leaders 2024 guide and as a Notable Practitioner for M&A and Private Equity. Clients report that “Claire is fantastic to work with” and that “Claire has overseen the team and provided great advice and support to us throughout. She is friendly and commercial in her approach”, and that she “understands what is important to us as clients.” Claire is also recognised in IFLR1000 (2024) and Best Lawyers (2023) for Private Equity and M&A.
Experience
- Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP on its acquisition, supported by Afendis Capital Management, of ice cream producer YSCO
- Davidson Kempner on its joint acquisition with Nature Infrastructure Capital of the solar and storage project development platform of Greencells Group (2024)
- Insight Partners in connection with its portfolio company Vinted’s €340 million secondary share sale (2024)
- Insight Partners in connection with the sale of Featurespace, a leader in payments protection technology, to Visa (2024)
- 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