After having launched a second office in Spain last year, Allen & Overy (A&O) has continued to build its offering in the country by recruiting finance partner Juan Hormaechea from Ashurst, where he most recently led the Spanish banking and international finance department.
Before joining Ashurst nearly 10 years ago, Hormaechea spent three years as vice president and assistant general counsel of the Equity Derivatives Group of JP Morgan Chase in London. Prior to this, he was also in-house counsel at Santander Investment (Banco Santander) and worked at Natwest Markets, both in Madrid.
Hormaechea specialises in structured finance and derivatives – particularly in equity and corporate debt. He also has experience on capital markets deals and disposing and acquiring loan portfolios.
He joins A&O’s Madrid office as a partner in the banking and finance practice taking the team’s total partner headcount to five. The hire comes on the back of ‘increasing legal advisory services as a result of regulatory changes and the increasingly sophisticated profile of investors in Spain’, the firm said in a statement.
Spain co-managing partner Ignacio Ruiz-Cámara added: ‘Juan’s appointment is in line with our current growth strategy in Spain and is aimed at ensuring that the banking and finance team continues to be one of the firm’s benchmark practice areas, both in Spain and on a global level.’
Hormaechea said: ‘Allen & Overy’s sophisticated approach in Spain and the potential to contribute to its growth was a major factor that influenced my decision to take this next step in my career following a successful ten years at leading law firm Ashurst.’
The news comes as Ashurst lost a four-partner team in June who joined King & Spalding to spearhead its Tokyo office launch while earlier this month Paul Hastings hired a nine-lawyer team in the US from the City stalwart including its US managing partner and finance partner Eugene Ferrer based in New York and global co-head of the securities and derivatives group, Scott Faga.
At the beginning of this year, nine investors in Europe’s largest solar power plant, including German energy giant RWE, instructed A&O to sue the Spanish government at the World Bank’s arbitration court following cuts to solar energy subsidies.
jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk
