Paul Hastings, which is intent on bulking up its English and US law finance practice in the City, has boosted its leveraged finance practice with the hire of Ashurst‘s banking partner Luke McDougall.
The US firm has hired McDougall, who focuses on European leveraged finance, cross-border acquisition finance and restructuring, only a year after he became partner. He will work alongside the US firm’s high yield bond partner Peter Schwartz, who joined from Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in October last year in what was the firm’s first major step towards building an integrated bank/bond leveraged finance team in the City.
McDougall leaves Ashurst after more than eight years having joined in 2006 from Australia-based Minter Ellison where he had been an associate since 2004. Some of his key work includes acting for Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Nomura as mandated lead arrangers of the €448m recapitalisation of Swiss-based Infront Sports & Media; and representing Bank of America Merrill Lynch as sole arranger and coordinator of the $4bn recapitalisation of Formula One.
Ronan O’Sullivan, chair of the London office, said: ‘This is the next step in the continuing growth of an integrated, versatile European bank finance and high yield practice, with strength in English law loans, New York law loans and high yield bonds.’
jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk