2026 Credit Funds Forum

Eliza Riffe Hollander, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Eliza Riffe Hollander is a partner in the firm’s finance practice, based in the New York office. She brings extensive experience advising lenders and borrowers on complex debt financings, with a particular focus on special situations finance and private credit. Eliza’s practice encompasses a wide range of financing matters, including liability management transactions, syndicated and pro-rata financings, private credit, fund financings, and complex recapitalizations. She has deep expertise in asset-based lending, junior capital, and unitranche financings. Known for her pragmatic approach and technical skill, Eliza is a trusted advisor to clients pursuing high-stakes capital solutions. Her experience representing both sides of the table gives her unique insight into negotiations, enabling her to deliver strategic and effective results for clients navigating a dynamic financing landscape.

Rachel Strickland, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Rachel Strickland is global chair of the firm’s business restructuring practice and brings decades of experience to advising distressed companies and investors in complex restructuring matters. Companies turn to Rachel in Chapter 11 cases and out-of-court restructurings, while top private equity firms, hedge funds, and strategic investors seek out her guidance when maximizing recoveries and acquiring distressed targets. She also has significant experience in mass tort restructuring matters.

Eugene Fialkovskiy, Managing Director, Senior Counsel, King Street

Eugene Fialkovskiy is a Managing Director on the US Research team at King Street, focusing on restructuring matters, stressed/distressed credit and capital solutions transactions. He is based in New York. Prior to joining King Street in 2011, Eugene worked at Latham & Watkins and Credit Suisse Eugene received a B.S. from Stony Brook University and a J.D. magna cum laude from St. John's School of Law.

Jonathan Ostrzega, Managing Director, Legal Affairs, Private Markets, PSP Investments

Jonathan Ostrzega is a Managing Director, Legal Affairs, Private Markets at PSP Investments, one of Canada's largest pension investment managers. In this role, he provides legal counsel across credit investments, private equity, and special situations, advising on complex transactions spanning multiple asset classes. Prior to joining PSP, Jonathan was an attorney in Milbank's Financial Restructuring group, where he represented creditors and companies in sophisticated cross-border restructurings and distressed situations. He holds law degrees from McGill University and has completed executive education at Harvard Law School.

Greg Seketa, Managing Director and Head of Special Situations, J.P. Morgan Asset Management

Greg Seketa is a Managing Director and Head of Special Situations for J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s Leveraged Finance group. He manages distressed investments across ~$79 billion AUM, invested for fund and pension clients across both bonds and syndicated loans in the US and abroad. Mr. Seketa has been with JPM for 10 years, has 25 years of experience in the investment advisory sector and earlier in his career practiced bankruptcy and business finance law for several law firms and a large financial institution. Greg graduated with honors from the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University and has an undergraduate degree from DePauw University.

Ariel Deckelbaum, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Ariel Deckelbaum is an M&A partner who advises clients on their most challenging, strategic and business-critical transactions. This includes mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, spin-offs, and cross-border and restructuring transactions, as well as other significant corporate matters. With more than 20 years of experience, Ariel represents public and private companies, private equity and asset management firms, boards of directors, special committees, family offices and high-net-worth individuals and other strategic investors.

Josh Lichtenstein, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Josh Lichtenstein is an ERISA and benefits partner in New York who heads the firm’s ERISA fiduciary practice and co-leads the firm’s collective investment trust (CIT) practice. Josh focuses on finding creative and practical solutions to issues involving the investment of plan assets in a constantly evolving asset management landscape. He advises banks, asset managers, private wealth platforms, large pension plans and other institutions on the ERISA issues that have emerged or found prominence in recent years. Josh is also frequently approached by the press as an authority on these matters.

Keith MacLeod, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Keith MacLeod is a member of the firm's asset management group and his practice focuses on the financial services industry. He represents investment advisers, family offices, investment funds, and institutional investors in complex transactional and regulatory matters, including mergers and acquisitions, investments, and securities law. He has extensive experience advising sponsors on launching cutting-edge registered products, including through the conversion of SMAs and mutual funds into ETFs and the negotiation of partnerships between traditional and alternatives sponsors. He also has deep experience in asset management M&A. He regularly negotiates the sale of investment advisers, fund businesses, wealth management platforms, and GP stakes.

Amy Roy, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Amy is a partner in the firm’s litigation and enforcement practice group, representing financial services firms, including investment advisers and mutual funds, and other clients in securities litigation and other complex business disputes in courts around the country. Amy focuses her practice on the investment management industry and has experience in litigating many of the leading issues facing the mutual fund industry, including excessive fee claims, prospectus liability and closed-end fund activism. In addition to active litigation matters, she regularly advises clients in federal and state government investigations. Amy is an industry thought leader on issues surrounding environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing practices, advising multiple clients on regulatory investigations and disclosure matters, and is also a regular speaker and commentator on ESG investing issues. She is co-chair of Ropes & Gray’s Associate Liaison Committee and a hiring partner for the Boston office.

Eva Carman, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Eva Carman is a seasoned civil and criminal litigator and co-head of Ropes & Gray’s global securities enforcement practice. She has more than 30 years of experience representing leading advisers and individuals in all types of financial investigations in front of the SEC, DOJ, CFTC and FINRA. Her focus is on insider trading, antitrust, employment litigation and private fund and broker dealer related regulatory and litigation issues. Her experience includes representing all types of advisers—RIAs, private equity funds, hedge funds, real estate funds, mutual funds and credit funds—in more than 150 SEC examinations and more than 70 enforcement investigations. She works globally, including with all 12 U.S. offices of the SEC. She has a deep understanding of all key regulatory areas, including fee and expense conflicts, use of affiliates, valuations, marketing, insider trading, sales practices, and disclosure issues.

Eve Ellis, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Eve Ellis is a partner in Ropes & Gray’s asset management group specializing in financial services regulation. She provides advice across a broad range of regulatory matters with a particular focus on fund regulation and has done so for over 15 years. In the latest edition of The Legal 500, clients describe Eve as “excellent,” “personable, accessible, very knowledgeable and commercially-focused.” Peers comment they are “impressed by her knowledge and commitment.” Eve also has an in-depth understanding of fund formation matters, allowing her to provide complex regulatory advice in context.

Nicole Krea, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Nicole is a partner in the asset management group. She counsels investment advisers, both registered and exempt, on a variety of regulatory matters, with a particular emphasis on the Investment Advisers Act. Nicole works with a wide array of private fund advisers, including advisers to private equity funds, hedge funds, credit funds, venture capital funds, crypto funds, and real estate funds, and also advises with respect to separately managed account relationships.

Anna Lawry, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Anna is a partner in the asset management group. The focus of Anna’s practice is derivatives. She has over 15 years of experience in this area, advising on derivatives in all the major asset classes, whether OTC or on-exchange, and any associated ISDA, collateral, brokerage, clearing and custody arrangements. Her transactional work includes advising on hedging arrangements, synthetic investments and financings in the context of a broad range of banking and corporate transactions, often cross-border in nature. She is frequently engaged in helping clients to navigate the custody and insolvency risk inherent in their transactions and structures. An important part of Anna’s practice is advising on regulatory regimes affecting derivatives, securities transactions and structured products. Her clients include hedge and PE funds, asset managers, financial institutions and corporates.

Laura Hirst, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Laura represents private fund clients and other financial institutions in connection with an array of fund formation and transactional matters. She regularly advises on the structuring, formation, offering and ongoing operation of a variety of private investment funds, including credit funds, private equity funds, hybrid funds, hedge funds and funds of funds, representing a broad range of investment strategies. Institutional investors such as sovereign and pension funds also seek Laura’s counsel in connection with primary and secondary investments, including seed transactions. Her broad practice encompasses both sponsor and investor representation, giving her unique insight into client issues and an in-depth knowledge of complex fund structures.

Matthieu Wharmby, Partner, Ropes & Gray

Matthieu is a partner in the finance group, focusing primarily on structured finance transactions and other alternative financing arrangements, including whole-business securitizations and other ABS transactions collateralized by fiber-optic networks, royalty interests and other alternative assets.

Joshua Levinson, Vice Chair & Chief Legal Officer, Golub Capital

Joshua Levinson joined Golub Capital in 2011 and serves as the Firm’s Vice Chair and Chief Legal Officer. He is responsible for leading key growth initiatives and managing the legal, compliance, marketing, communications, content and responsible investing functions for the Firm. Mr. Levinson previously served as an officer of GBDC and managed the product solutions function for the Firm. Prior to joining Golub Capital, Mr. Levinson was Counsel at Magnetar Capital, and before that, in private practice at King & Spalding and Wilson Sonsini. Mr. Levinson earned his BS degree in Political Science from Vanderbilt University. He received a JD cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an associate editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. Mr. Levinson has earned the right to use the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designation.

Ahmet Yetis, Senior Managing Director, Evercore

Ahmet Yetis is a senior managing director in Evercore’s Private Capital Advisory group, leading structured capital solutions and debt capital markets efforts. He has over 20 years of banking and debt capital markets experience, having innovated numerous award-winning capital markets products for FIG investment bank clients, including first-ever USD denominated AT1 capital security for Bank of Nova Scotia, inaugural CFO offerings for Ares, GCM Grosvenor, Sculptor Capital, Churchill and Thrivent. Prior to joining Evercore, he was the Americas head of capital solutions at UBS. Mr. Yetis has long-standing experience in advising banks, alternative asset managers and insurance companies on capital markets, structured solutions, ratings and regulatory advisory, and risk and capital management topics.

Mr. Yetis holds a B.S. in civil engineering from Middle East Technical University in Ankara/Turkiye and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University.