Title: Director
Firm: Hilltop Securities
Age: 33
Kayla MacEwen’s tireless efforts on an “exhausting but amazing” project helped finance an arena central to Detroit’s economic recovery.
“At the end of the day, it was a great deal and everybody was happy,” said MacEwen, 33, a Hilltop Securities director who shuttled regularly between Boston and the Motor City for more than two years.
The result was a $450 million financing through taxable and tax-exempt bonds to construct Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit, home to the NHL’s Red Wings. The new facility opened in the fall of 2017 and also hosts the NBA’s Pistons as well as concerts and other special events.
A major challenge was negotiating the complicated transaction with the city in bankruptcy. “The Little Caesars Arena could not have been completed without her invaluable financial creativity,” said Scott Fisher, chief financial officer of Illitch Holdings, the family-owned company whose holdings include Little Caesars Pizza, the Red Wings, baseball’s Tigers and Olympia Entertainment, which operates the Fox Theatre.
To Kayla, working with a rebounding city was especially rewarding. The Illitch family, she said, helped set the right tone. “They really established the ‘this is my city, I’m going to support it’ mentality.”
MacEwen, from North Attleboro, Mass., earned her business degree at the University of Rhode Island. She rose quickly after joining First Southwest in 2007, before its merger into Hilltop. She is a co-lead banker on transactions and also helps manage the Northeast region team, trains analysts and attends large national conferences.
