Latham & Watkins has recruited high-profile Norton Rose derivatives and structured finance partner Dean Naumowicz as the US giant makes its third senior City hire of the year.
Naumowicz was part of the Norton Rose team that in March advised Società di Progetto Brebemi on the financing for a €2.338bn toll motorway project. Other recent deals in which he has advised include acting for lenders UK Green Investment Bank, Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander and Siemens Bank on a £225m financing in the renewables sector.
The news comes only a month after Latham’s 52-partner City arm recruited Clifford Chance head of private equity David Walker.The 600-partner firm earlier this year also recruited Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) litigation partner Simon Bushell. Bushell co-chaired HSF’s London corporate fraud and asset tracing practice and was head of the firm’s crisis management practice.
Commenting on the appointment, London managing partner Nick Cline said: ‘Dean is an outstanding lawyer and we are very pleased that he will be joining our derivatives and financial institutions team. His move is another marker of Latham’s continued growth and development in London.’
Norton Rose told Legal Business that partner Laurence Garside will lead the firm’s derivatives team in London in Naumowicz’s place.
Norton Rose head of banking Jeremy Edwards stressed the firm’s recent growth in finance commenting: ‘We have continued to grow our debt capital markets team with the addition of David Shearer from Allen & Overy, Peter Young from Vinson & Elkins and structured finance specialist Simon Lew from Clifford Chance in London. We have also grown our debt capital markets team internationally, for example, Scott Millar and Tessa Hoser have joined us in Australia, Ji Liu in Hong Kong, and Andrew Bleau recently relocated from Canada to our Hong Kong debt capital markets team.’
A group of leading US law firms have made strategic inroads in the City in recent years with Latham, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Dechert displaying particularly expansive form of late. The trend looks set to continue throughout 2013.
caroline.hill@legalease.co.uk