News & Analysis

Covington hires PE regulatory pro

Fred Knecht, formerly in-house general counsel for Merrill Lynch’s private equity and origination arms, will focus on securities regulatory matters in the law firm’s New York office.

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Covington & Burling has hired Fred Knecht as a partner in its corporate practice, focusing on capital markets and securities regulatory matters. He will work out of New York.

Knecht was most recently at Merrill Lynch, where he was a managing director and general counsel for the global origination and private equity divisions. Before that Knecht spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was head of investment banking legal for the Americas.

At Merrill Lynch, he led the firm’s legal coverage for Merrill Lynch’s private equity principal investments business, including acquisitions, divestitures and other monetisation events, investment monitoring, private equity fund formation and maintenance, and corporate governance matters.

Knecht has practiced before the SEC, FINRA, the NYSE and NASDAQ, among others. He has also been a member of various SIFMA and New York City Bar securities regulatory committees and task forces. He has also worked on non-US legal and regulatory issues and processes in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Canada.

He began his career at Sullivan & Cromwell.