Addleshaw Goddard has announced the launch of three new European offices this week, opening a new Luxemburg base and adding two new German offices.
The Luxemburg office will be led by Fieldfisher’s former head of corporate and banking, Richard Ledain Santiago. Santiago, who joined Fieldfisher in 2018 from Allen & Overy, will focus on funds and funds finance work.
John Joyce, managing partner of Addleshaw, said: ‘As around 90% of the funds finance transactions that we are involved in involve Luxembourg advice and/or Luxemburg funds, it makes perfect sense for us to follow our clients there, many of whom are already extremely active in the region.’
In Frankfurt, the firm hired two teams from commercial law firm Advant Beiten, including white-collar crime and compliance specialists Jörg Bielefeld and Alexander Schmid and a corporate practice led by André Suttorp.
Also in Frankfurt, the team added litigation partner Markus Perkams from Skadden. While in Munich, the firm recruited IT, IP and data protection partner Manuela Finger, who joins with a team from Gowling WLG.
Joyce said that its recent European expansion, which included a merger with Dublin-based law firm Eugene F Collins in March and the launch of new offices in Paris in January 2021 and Hamburg in June 2019, ‘has exceeded initial expectations’. He added: ‘We look forward to continuing to deliver our commitment to offering clients comprehensive, EU-wide, support.’
Meanwhile, in London, Osborne Clarke has bolstered its energy and utilities sector practice, taking John Deacon, Dominic O’Brien and Hannah Roscoe, specialists in the renewables and power management and waste and bioenergy sub-sectors, from Orrick.
These hires follow the addition of energy partner Hugo Lidbetter, who joined from Fieldfisher in January and support the firm’s decarbonisation transformation work, which is a key part of its ‘3D client strategy’ launched in 2020 to assist clients with issues relating to digitalisation, decarbonisation and urban dynamics.
Elsewhere in the City, Freshfields has lost competition partner Marie-Claire Strawbridge to Morrison & Foerster. She brings a breadth of experience advising on merger control and foreign direct investment aspects of complex global transactions as well as in complex UK Competition and Markets Authority investigations.
Meanwhile, Dechert has enticed civil fraud expert Judith Seddon over from Ropes & Gray. Seddon, who is ranked by The Legal 500 as a leading individual, represents corporate clients, financial institutions and individuals in SFO and FCA investigations.
In the disputes arena, Clyde & Co strengthened its international arbitration practice with the addition of Loukas Mistelis. Mistelis is currently a professor at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London and will stay on at the University part-time.
Finally, across the Atlantic, Cooley has added to its West Coast capabilities with the addition of capital markets and corporate governance expert John-Paul Motley from O’Melveny & Myers.
