Allen & Overy has promoted 14 London partners amid a scaled up 34-strong global round while Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has promoted its first City partner in three years.
The Magic Circle firm made heavier investment in new partners than last year and also significantly improved the promotion of women, minting eight females – equal to 24% of the newest partners – of which two are part-time. Last year, A&O made up only two women in its 20-strong round, having the same month vowed to redouble its diversity efforts.
Notably, Shruti Ajitsaria, the head of its tech innovation space Fuse, was promoted to partner.
Ajitsaria said: ‘After training at A&O, I think it’s fair to say I have taken a slightly alternative career path. The success of Fuse is testament to the spirit of innovation which runs throughout the firm – from management to our trainees and across our global offices.’
Jonathan Brayne, chairman of Fuse, added: ‘Shruti has been fundamental to the highly successful launch and operation of Fuse, A&O’s tech innovation space. I’m confident she will take it to another level as a partner and will find new ways of keeping Fuse – and with it Allen & Overy – in the vanguard of legal market tech innovation.’
The firm has a target of having 30% female partner candidates by 2021 with a view to having 30% women in its partnership overall. The other London promotions saw five made up in banking, four in corporate, two in international capital markets (ICM) and two in litigation.
Skadden, meanwhile, has promoted Denis Klimentchenko from counsel to partner for its City M&A bench, a rare investment for the firm having bypassed London altogether for two-years running.
While a show of support for the London office, the 11-strong global round is scaled back from previous years when 14 were made up in 2018 and 12 were promoted in 2017. Klimentchenko is the first promotion in London since Sandro de Bernardini was minted to Skadden’s City M&A team back in 2016.
The full list of A&O partner promotions:
Arnold Keizer, litigation, Amsterdam
Hilde Van der Baan, litigation, Amsterdam
Sarah Wilson, banking, Bangkok
Thales Mertens, litigation, Brussels
Kyle Nevin, banking, Dubai
Anthony Traboulsi, banking, Dubai
Zeid Qursha, corporate, Dubai
Tina LeDinh, corporate, Ho Chi Minh City
Oleg Khomenko, banking, London
Catherine Lang-Anderson, banking, London
Nick Lister, banking, London
Ed Moser, banking, London
Jodi Norman, banking, London
Michael Bloch, corporate, London
Kate McInerney, corporate, London
Hugh Robinson, corporate, London
William Samengo-Turner, corporate, London
Shruti Ajitsaria, Fuse, London
Peter Crossan, ICM, London
Suril Patel, ICM, London
Brandon O’Neil, litigation, London
Robbie Sinclair, litigation, London
Yannick Arbaut, banking, Luxembourg
Jacques Graas, corporate, Luxembourg
Paul Peporte, ICM, Luxembourg
Santiago de Vicente, real estate, Madrid
Paolo Nastasi, corporate, Milan
Bulat Zhambalnimbuev, corporate, Moscow
Magnus Mueller, tax, Munich
Xavier Jancène, real estate, Paris
Aloysius Tan, ICM, Singapore
Tokutaka Ito, corporate, Tokyo
Bartosz Merczynski, litigation, Warsaw
Maura Rezendes, corporate, Washington DC
The full list of Skadden partner promotions:
Christopher Barlow, M&A, New York
Julie Cohen, litigation, New York
Elena Coyle, financial institutions, New York
Alec Jarvis, tax, New York
Denis Klimentchenko, M&A, London
Joseph Larkin, litigation/corporate restructuring, Wilmington
Christopher Murphy, tax controversy, Palo Alto
Alisha Nanda, litigation, Boston
Christine Okike, corporate restructuring, New York
Paloma Wang, capital markets, Hong Kong
Geoffrey Wyatt, mass torts, insurance & consumer litigation, Washington DC