IN-PERSON
Miami, FL
March 4-5, 2026
March 4-5, 2026
Beachside Insights. Boardroom Results.
HPE Miami is our flagship healthcare private equity event—where industry leaders gather under the South Beach sun to make meaningful connections and unlock bold strategies for outpacing the competition. For two days, investors, operators, and dealmakers converge in an exclusive setting designed for real conversations and real results. Come for the beach. Stay for the competitive advantage.
Special access only
Operating in today’s healthcare environment: Protecting margins and managing risk
Scaling what works: Practical expansion strategies for 2026
Implementing health AI in the regulatory limelight
Leading through people: Building teams and culture that foster growth
Operating in today’s healthcare environment: Protecting margins and managing risk
Scaling what works: Practical expansion strategies for 2026
Implementing health AI in the regulatory limelight
Leading through people: Building teams and culture that foster growth
Fundraising in a selective market
Liquidity solutions in focus: Continuation funds, secondaries, and GP stakes
Fund finance strategies: Capital, flexibility, and portfolio stewardship
Fundraising in a selective market
Liquidity solutions in focus: Continuation funds, secondaries, and GP stakes
Fund finance strategies: Capital, flexibility, and portfolio stewardship
Market Update from McKinsey & Company
The 2026 PE playbook: Winning in healthcare
C-suite insights: How leadership is positioning itself for 2026
Inside the healthcare deal market: Banker insights for 2026
Strategic buyers’ perspectives: How corporate acquirers are approaching growth
The health tech reset: How investors are underwriting growth, differentiation, and returns
The outpatient boom: Growth across physician and ancillary services
Healthcare 3.0: Concierge models and the consumerization of care
Market Update from McKinsey & Company
The 2026 PE playbook: Winning in healthcare
C-suite insights: How leadership is positioning itself for 2026
Inside the healthcare deal market: Banker insights for 2026
Strategic buyers’ perspectives: How corporate acquirers are approaching growth
The health tech reset: How investors are underwriting growth, differentiation, and returns
The outpatient boom: Growth across physician and ancillary services
Healthcare 3.0: Concierge models and the consumerization of care
Leads firmwide strategy and culture as firm chairman
Advises healthcare clients on high-stakes mergers, acquisitions, and disputes, with a private equity focus
Advises private equity groups, private credit funds, commercial lending institutions, and public and private companies on corporate finance matters
Structures and negotiates secured and unsecured financing transactions for both borrowers and lenders
Counsels on domestic and cross-border debt transactions, including acquisition financings, recapitalizations, loan workouts, and restructurings
Kristian (Krist) Werling is the global head of McDermott’s Health & Life Sciences practice, which provides regulatory and transactional counsel to health and life sciences industry leaders, changemakers, and investors.
Krist and the McDermott Health & Life Sciences team lead the most significant transactions, critical regulatory issues, and litigation matters that shape the health and life sciences industry. In his own practice, Krist represents life sciences companies, health service providers, private equity firms, and venture capital investors in a wide variety of transactional and regulatory matters. He has led cutting-edge industry transactions that have introduced cancer and gene therapy products to the global market, expanded access to fertility services, increased the availability of cost-effective outpatient surgical services, and transformed the delivery of physician services in a broad range of specialties.
Krist's decades of experience on the buy-side and sell-side of health and life sciences dealmaking spans the healthcare and life sciences landscape. He leads cross-disciplinary teams and delivers business-focused legal guidance to help clients pursue their most innovative strategies, working across borders and health and life sciences subsectors to connect and advise industry stakeholders. Krist is also skilled at developing creative transaction structures, conducting sector-specific due diligence, and providing forward-looking counsel to mitigate issues that can derail transactions or stunt long-term growth. His deep understanding of sector-specific regulatory nuances allows him to efficiently close transactions and maximize client outcomes.
Representative PE clients include Ampersand Capital Partners (buy-side and sell-side); Amulet Capital Partners (buy-side and sell-side); Windrose Health Investors (buy-side and sell-side M&A, and joint venture matters); Iron Path Capital (investments, carve-out acquisitions and new platform formations), Quad-C (new platform formation and investment and sell-side), PPC (buy-side).
Representative healthcare and life sciences companies include Baxter International and Vanda Pharmaceuticals (cross-border sales and acquisitions; licensing); REGENXBIO (strategic partnership with AbbVie); Cleveland Clinic, Hospital for Special Surgery and Northwestern Medicine (strategic innovation investments and joint ventures); numerous founder-owned businesses in strategic transactions with investors.
Samantha R. Koplik focuses her practice on leveraged finance transactions for private equity firms, strategic buyers, institutional investors, biotech/pharma companies, private debt funds and other providers and consumers of debt financing. She advises clients on a broad range of domestic and cross-border financing transactions, including acquisition financing, recapitalizations, strategic capital raises, restructurings and exits. She also provides general financing and corporate advice to a number of private equity portfolio companies and other operating companies across various industries in the United States and multiple other jurisdictions.
David S. Ivill works alongside health-focused private equity (PE) companies, hospitals, health systems and physician groups on their most sophisticated transactions. His experience on both sides of the health transaction deal table gives him valuable insight into the structuring best practices, and regional and sector-specific nuances that can make or break a transaction. A nationally recognized healthcare dealmaker, David has particularly deep experience with hospitals and health systems in the Northeastern United States, where he leverages his PE experience to help hospital clients maximize their transaction goals. David serves as a practice area leader for McDermott’s global Healthcare PE practice, as well as partner-in-charge of the Firm’s New York healthcare team.
David’s practice covers both the regulatory and transactional issues that come to bear in healthcare services transactions, joint ventures and other strategic collaborations. He looks beyond the traditional deal lawyer scope to prioritize the future health of the organization post-closing, incorporating considerations like physician alignment, compliance and reimbursement at the outset of negotiations. David has counseled a wide range of healthcare service providers, including Northwell Health, Crouse Hospital, Maimonides Medical Center, U.S. Renal Care and large academic medical centers, to achieve their growth and expansion goals.
He advises PE firms such as The Riverside Company, Quad-C Management, Beecken Petty O’Keefe & Company, Iron Path Capital and Deerfield Management in multi-faceted transactions. David is highly sought-after for his counsel on operational and management issues in the context of healthcare’s complex regulatory frameworks, whether it be in the course of business or in connection with affiliations, mergers and acquisitions, fraud and abuse, compliance programs, reimbursement matters or corporate practice of medicine issues.
Prior to practicing law, David was a surgeon specializing in foot and ankle reconstruction with a subspecialty in osteomyelitis of the lower extremity. He completed his residency at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Philadelphia and an AO Fellowship (for reconstructive surgery and surgical intervention for infections) in Ravensburg, Germany.
David frequently speaks on healthcare private equity matters alongside investment bankers and c-suite leaders, helping to bridge the gap between the financial and legal aspects of sophisticated healthcare transactions.
Disclaimer
Do not send any information or documents that you want to have treated as secret or confidential. Providing information to McDermott Will & Schulte via email links on this website or other introductory email communications will not create an attorney-client relationship; will not preclude McDermott Will & Schulte from representing any other person or firm in any matter; and will not obligate McDermott Will & Schulte to keep confidential the information you provide. McDermott Will & Schulte cannot enter into an attorney-client relationship with you until McDermott Will & Schulte has determined that doing so will not create a conflict of interest and until you and McDermott Will & Schulte have entered into a written agreement or engagement letter that sets forth the terms of our relationship.