Legal Business

A&O ups the ante on female partner promotions as Skadden ends City investment drought

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

 

nathalie.tidman@legalease.co.uk