Clifford Chance‘s partnership has elected City energy partner Jeremy Connick and corporate partner Neeraj Budhwani, who is based in Hong Kong, to its partnership council.
The two new recruits replace outgoing council members; corporate partner Katherine Coates and litigator Simon Davis who have both completed two terms.
Connick and Budhwani join a team of eight including committee chair senior partner Malcolm Sweeting, along with energy and infrastructure Kate McCarthy and foreign legal consultant Tim Wang, who were re-elected to serve a second three-year term.
The remaining partnership council members, finance partner Giuseppe de Palma based in Italy and Munich based finance partner Barbara Mayer-Trautmann are mid-way through their terms.
The new joiners come after the firm’s managing partner Matthew Layton made a pledge to trim the firm’s unwieldy governance structure after he assumed the head role in May 2014. The move saw the firm phase out the regional and practice head elections in favour of an appointment by the managing partner.
The firm retains a vote for the managing partner role, senior partner role, and members of its partnership council, its main oversight body and puts more matters to a full partner vote than most peers. Clifford Chance has a separate 12-strong management committee, which according to the firm’s latest LLP accounts, took a 7% pay decrease while the firm’s revenue and profit fell. That committee was also trimmed from 16 to 12 members in the last financial year.
The two new members will join the council on 19 March.
jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk
For more on Clifford Chance’s management subscribers can read: ‘Clifford Chance – The shoulders of giants’
The partnership council members are:
Neeraj Budhwani – Hong Kong, Corporate
Jeremy Connick – London, Finance
Giuseppe de Palma – Milan, Finance
Barbara Mayer-Trautmann – Munich, Finance
Kate McCarthy – Washington, DC, Finance
Tim Wang – Beijing, Corporate.
Jane Barker – external member