Travers Smith has appointed six lawyers to its partnership in another sizeable promotion round for the City thoroughbred.
Although one promotion down on last year’s seven-strong round, it constitutes an upswing on the previous two years where two promotions were made in 2014 and three in 2013.
Set to take effect from 1 July, the appointments include two women and cover a broad range of areas including intellectual property (IP), competition, corporate finance and securities and tax.
Those rewarded include US securities practitioner Dan McNamee, who focuses on cross-border equity and debt capital markets transactions, as well as competition specialist Stephen Whitfield, who has worked on antitrust investigations and previously advised Pace on the merger control aspects of its £1.4bn acquisition by ARRIS Group.
Senior partner Chris Hale (pictured) commented: ‘I am very pleased that again this year we have elected as partners six outstanding lawyers, all of whom either trained with Travers Smith or spent their formative years with the firm.’
Hale told Legal Business: ‘How we promote is a combination of various factors and this year we happen to have a cohort of very strong candidates – we can see growth opportunities in each of them.’
Travers, which is best known for its highly-rated private equity practice, has been one of strongest-performing players in the UK top 50 over the last years, hiking revenues by 47% since 2010, with profits per partner hitting £947,000 for the 2014/15 financial year.
The promotions, however, follow a rare departure for the 64-partner City practice, with corporate partner Helen Croke this month resigning for Ropes & Gray. Having qualified at Travers in 2001, Croke has made a name for herself as the relationship partner for buyout house Bridgepoint. She will join the team of former Travers Smith private equity head Phil Sanderson, who joined Ropes in 2014.
Sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk
Travers partner promotions 2016:
Louisa Chambers, commercial, IP and technology
Paul Kenny, real estate
Dan McNamee, corporate finance and US securities law
Barry Newman, finance
Elena Rowlands, tax
Stephen Whitfield, competition
