The international recruitment market remains buoyant with transactional hires dominating.
US giant Goodwin has continued its bullish growth strategy into 2022, following its dramatic expansion in 2021 that saw nine lateral hires in London alone. This week, the firm bolstered its financial regulatory expertise with the addition in London of Andrew Henderson from Macfarlanes and private equity partner Daniel Dusek in Hong Kong from Kirkland & Ellis.
Henderson’s expertise, which includes advising on financial services regulation and risk management, will be an asset to the firm’s growing private funds team, according to Michael Halford, co-chair of Goodwin’s practice. ‘As the practice has got bigger, so has the demand for regulatory,’ he said. ‘We are finding that we are acting for larger and more institutional clients, and they tend to have a greater need for regulatory advice, but there are also increased demands across the funds area more generally. ESG, for example, is a big area of regulation; bringing private individuals into funds is another growing area that is highly regulated, and, partly due to Brexit, fundraising involves a lot more upfront regulatory advice too.’
His arrival also complements the firm’s other areas of specialism, Halford added: ‘One of the great things about Andrew is that he is not just on the funds side, but he covers the transactional side as well. For our private equity deals team, which is increasingly buying and selling regulated businesses, that skill set is really important to have. We also have a big tech practice, and his expertise will help on the fintech side too.’
The addition of The Legal 500-ranked M&A partner Dusek in Hong Kong strengthens the firm’s cross-border corporate transactions capabilities – his experience includes acting for both private equity investors and corporates. He is the fourth partner to join the Hong Kong private equity practice in the past 12 months, following the arrivals of Edwin Chan in June 2021 from Paul Weiss, Phil Culhane in July 2021 from Culhane & Associates and Elyn Xing, who joined from Debevoise & Plimpton in October.
Meanwhile, in the City, Tariq Zafar Rasheed has joined Reed Smith from Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner where he led its derivatives practice, focusing on transactions, clearing, prime brokerage arrangements and structured products. Of Rasheed’s arrival Panos Katsambas, global co-chair of Reed Smith’s financial industry group, said: ‘His practice is supplementary to our growing structured finance capabilities. This is an area that we have been investing in, including with the hire of Daniel Birch — who focuses on structured finance in the energy space — earlier this year. We are generally seeing more hedge funds taking a bigger slice of the trading market and with trends here and in the US, including around crypto businesses, we only expect to see more of a move towards derivatives structures.’
Reacting to increased data and technology sector demand, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has hired data privacy, cybersecurity and IT expert Joel Harrison from Milbank. Harrison, who is ranked as a leading individual for IT and telecoms work in The Legal 500, will handle a range of transactional, advisory and contentious matters. He is joined by new partner Alison Beal, who will focus on outsourcing and technology transactions.
Staying with the theme of data privacy, Linklaters’ US head of cybersecurity has joined Debevoise. Erez Liebermann will be based in the firm’s New York office in the data strategy and security group and will focus on cyber-incident response matters in addition to providing data-related regulatory advice. Before joining Linklaters, the former federal prosecutor spent time in house at global insurance company Prudential Financial as chief cybersecurity and privacy counsel.
Linklaters has also lost two corporate partners in Hong Kong to magic circle rival Allen & Overy. The firm’s former Hong Kong head of corporate, Gilbert Li, has departed alongside partner Iris Yeung. Li, who has expertise in the energy, infrastructure, financial services and fintech sectors, will split his time between A&O’s Hong Kong and Sydney offices, while Hong Kong-based Yeung will work with the firm’s Greater China practice and its joint operation firm, Shanghai Lang Yue Law Firm, in advising Mainland China companies on public and private fundraising and other corporate transactions.
Elsewhere in Asia, White & Case has expanded its global project development and finance practice with the addition of Julien Bocobza in Tokyo. The energy and infrastructure projects expert joins from Norton Rose Fulbright where he advised on a range of renewables, hydrogen, nuclear, conventional power and infrastructure transactions across Asia Pacific, as well as the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
Meanwhile, BCLP has focused its strategic growth on Europe with the hire of four partners in Frankfurt from DLA Piper. The coup includes the former head of DLA’s finance and projects group Torsten Pokropp, real estate finance expert Frank Schwem, transactional real estate partner Christian Lonquich and Mike Danielewsky, who focuses on restructuring and insolvency work. This follows BCLP’s recent expansion in Paris, which included the addition in May of a corporate and M&A team from EY, led by Roland Montfort.
Finally, staying in Germany, Hogan Lovells has expanded its compliance and investigations practice with the addition of in-house lawyer Philip Matthey in Munich. Matthey will join from TRATON Group, where he is chief compliance officer and head of governance, risk and compliance, by 1 October. He previously spent time at Linklaters and Cleary Gottlieb, before moving in house to ThyssenKrupp and later MAN SE.
