New York firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher has moved to build a City buyout practice with the hire of private equity duo Matthew Dean and Claire McDaid from Kirkland & Ellis, which also recently lost Dan Oates to O’Melveny and Myers and Ross Allardice to White & Case.
The arrival of Dean and McDaid takes Willkie Farr up to eight partners in London, where the firm already has corporate, white-collar criminal and civil litigation and tax practices, as it looks to grow its private equity and hedge fund offering across Europe.
