Abhay Patel

Abhay Patel is a Managing Director at Lafayette Square. Prior to joining Lafayette, Abhay served as Managing Director, Mergers and Acquisitions at Butler Snow Advisory, where he led sell side, buyside and capital raise transactions for companies in the lower- and middle-market. Prior to joining Butler Snow, Abhay served as interim CEO and Board member for the Pelican Institute, where he led the organization through an executive transition and was primarily responsible for supporting Smart on Crime - a public-private partnership that led the passage of historic criminal justice reform legislation in Louisiana. Prior to that role, Abhay was a 2016 candidate for the United States Senate in Louisiana. Before his campaign, Abhay served as Vice President of Business Development for the New Orleans Business Alliance(NOLABA), where he led the firm’s business retention, expansion and attraction platform.

Prior to entering the public sector, Abhay spent most of his career as an investment banker with Deutsche Bank in New York. While there, he worked on transactions raising over $30 billion of debt and equity capital for leading U.S. companies and advised on several notable mergers and acquisitions. Abhay graduated from Louisiana State University and holds a J.D. from the Boston University School of Law.

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