In a week dominated by European hires, Ashurst and Dentons turned to the City with hires in project finance and data privacy, respectively.
Eversheds Sutherland, CMS and Pinsent Masons, meanwhile, all expanded on the continent, with Eversheds adding three partners.
Ashurst grew its project finance team in London with the appointment of Adrian Lawrence, who joins from White & Case and focuses on project finance, banking, corporate and capital markets transactions, with an emphasis on oil and gas and petrochemical projects.
Co-head of the global projects practice Joss Dare told Legal Business: ‘He’s been working on some of the largest oil and gas project financings in the world and is an important part of our plans to grow our international project finance capability, building on recent hires.’ He added: ‘Geographically, he does work around the world but a lot of his focus will be working with Matt Wood to build out our Africa practice.’
Lawrence commented: ‘Ashurst has an excellent project development and finance team, with extensive experience advising both project sponsors and lenders on landmark transactions throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.’
Dentons, meanwhile, hired data privacy and cyber security partner Antonis Patrikios in London. Patrikios, who joins from Fieldfisher, has experience in the telecommunications, media and technology sectors.
Head of Dentons’ media and telecoms practice Andy Lucas commented: ‘His hire reflects the demand we’re seeing from our clients for data privacy and cyber security advice, and growing our capabilities in this area is a focus for our UK business to enable us to better support our clients on their global data privacy and cyber security needs.’
In the Netherlands, Eversheds added corporate partner Jeroen Hoekstra and commercial partner Benjamin van Kessel from Nineyards Law, while corporate partner Elmer Veenman joined from De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek.
Hoekstra is a founding partner of Nineyards Law, established in 2015, and was previously a partner and co-head of the corporate M&A group at Baker McKenzie. He focuses on joint ventures, M&A, private equity transactions and restructurings. Van Kessel advises on all aspects of intellectual property, information technology and commercial law, while Veenman advises on M&A and corporate transactions.
Eversheds European managing partner Helen Thomas told Legal Business: ‘The Netherlands is an interesting region because it’s had significant economic growth and Brexit will also bring opportunities. There are lots of businesses looking to possibly move operations to the region and Dutch businesses are very active globally. It’s seen as a great place to do business, so strengthening and deepening our corporate commercial team is a response to client needs.’
Elsewhere, CMS boosted its energy and infrastructure projects practices with the hire of Lukasz Szatkowski from Weil, Gotshal & Manges. Szatkowski has more than fifteen years’ experience in transaction, projects and regulatory advice for international and Polish energy companies.
Managing partner of CMS Poland Andrzej Posniak commented: ‘Strengthening the energy team is another element of the development strategy of this practice. We hope that Lukasz, a valued expert in the energy sector, will help us expand both the client base of the firm and the offer for companies operating on this market’.
Pinsent Masons hired capital markets partner Susanne Lenz from Hogan Lovells to its Frankfurt office. Lenz advises global and domestic investment banks as well as corporates on high-yield bonds, IPOs, private placements, rights issues, block trades, dual listings, convertible bonds and debt issuance programs.
Finally, TLT appointed Sean McCay from Squire Patton Boggs as partner. McCay, who is experienced in litigation, will lead the construction team in its Manchester office.