Mayer Brown has bolstered its European corporate team with the hire of two former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer lawyers, including one from Davis Polk & Wardwell, to its corporate and securities practice in Paris.
Both partners will officially join Mayer Brown on 1 April. Corporate partner Arnaud Pérès joins from Davis Polk having been a partner there for almost a decade. He joined the firm in August 2005, becoming its first French partner and first partner to practice the law of a country outside of the United States. Before Davis Polk, he worked at Magic Circle firm Freshfields for fifteen years having joined in 1990 as an associate and being made up to partner in 1999.
Alongside Pérès, corporate partner Jean-François Louit joins from French corporate boutique Scotto & Associés, where he was head of the corporate M&A practice. Like Pérès, Louit has also worked at both Davis Polk and Freshfields as a lawyer.
Pérès has a substantial client list having acted for Carrefour on the total sale of its operations in Greece in 2012, EDF on an over €3bn offer for the publicly held share capital of EDF Energies Nouvelles, and French multi-national Eramet on its €400m private placement of bonds and their listing on Euronext Paris in 2013. His main experience is advising clients in public and private M&A, equity capital markets and complex cross-border restructurings but has also worked on corporate governance and management incentive schemes. He is also a member of the Issuer Commission of the French Market Authority.
‘Arnaud and Jean-François are highly regarded in each of their fields of expertise and we are delighted to welcome them both,’ said Jean-Philippe Lambert, a member of Mayer Brown’s global management committee. ‘Their combined skill set in M&A and capital markets strategically complements our existing platform both in Paris and globally.’
In the City, Mayer Brown recently hired DLA Piper’s structured trade and receivables finance head Alex Dell as it eyed an increase in cross-border asset-based lending throughout Europe.
jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk