DLA Piper and Ince & Co have made team hires in Germany this week, while Shearman & Sterling and Fox Williams have boosted their City offerings.
DLA Piper has brought on three corporate partners to its Frankfurt office from US firm K&L Gates. Mathias Schulze Steinen, Andreas Fuechsel and Claudius Paul will take up their posts next week bringing client relationships with The Carlyle Group, Oakley Capital Private Equity, Mood Media and Verivox.
Schulze Steinen advises local and international companies in corporate law, above all in restructuring measures, the law relating to stock corporations and corporate finance, and Fuechsel focusses on the fields of private equity/M&A, company law relating to capital markets, complex restructuring measures and the structuring of joint ventures. Paul specialises in private equity and M&A as well as in German corporate law, particularly in the technology, life sciences and financial services sectors.
Meanwhile, Ince & Co has acquired Hamburg law firm Schwenke & Partner which will join its German office on 1 May. Senior partner of the Hamburg firm Thomas Schwenke brings with him one associate, two paralegals and three business services staff. He specialises in corporate and finance in the shipping, offshore and renewable energy sectors. Schwenke trained and worked for specialist corporate and finance law firms in London and Hamburg as trainee, associate and partner before establishing Schwenke & Partner in 2000.
Shearman & Sterling has reappointed antitrust lawyer Christopher Bright in London, who was appointed by the government as a member of the UK Competition Commission in a part-time quasi-judicial decision-making role in 2006. Bright has stayed on at Shearman as a consultant following his appointment after he established the firm’s City antitrust practice. His appointment marks the first semblance of a lateral hire since the arrival of M&A partner Frank Miller from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Jeremy Sharpe in international arbitration from the US Department of State, both announced in September 2015.
Finally, Fox Williams has taken on Cooley regulatory partner Chris Finney who will join the firm’s London office next week. Finney is focused on UK and European regulatory issues. His clients include national and international (re)insurers, payment services providers, private equity venture capital fund managers, brokers and fintech companies of all kinds. Finney joined Cooley in 2015 – the year the US firm opened its doors in London – from Edwards Wildman Palmer (EWP). The vast majority of the firm’s London office made the move to Cooley’s City office ahead of EWP’s merger with Locke Lorde.
madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk