Office launches follow team hire from Troutman earlier this year
Clyde & Co continues to look for opportunities to expand in the US following the opening of new Chicago and Washington DC offices, after taking on a team of ten lawyers from Global 100 firm Troutman Sanders at the end of January.
Troutman’s Chicago office managing partner Eileen King Bower will head up Clydes’ new office, alongside partner Clint Cameron who becomes co-head. They will be joined by Troutman partners David Cutter and James Sanders.
Clydes also picked up a six-partner team from Troutman specialising in insurance litigation to open its Washington DC office. The team includes partners Jack Gerstein, David Gische, Leslie Ahari, Meredith Werner, Patrick Hofer and Gaby Richeimer.
Both deals were underway before Clydes’ former senior partner James Burns moved across to become the firm’s head of the Americas in September last year, with Simon Konsta replacing him as senior partner. Burns says the firm is looking to recruit more associates externally for the two new offices and is also considering moving lawyers around its US network.
According to Burns, the firm targeted Chicago to service its major insurance clients based in the city, including American International Group, Allianz, Swiss Re and XL Catlin. The firm expects the office will also provide coverage across Illinois and the mid west, which Clydes says is an important area for the insurance claims market.
Burns told Legal Business: ‘We identified two teams of lawyers that were market leading, high calibre and were exceptionally strong insurance coverage lawyers. When you look at the two markets, in one respect it was a geographical opportunity, but in another respect – and probably as important if not more important – was identifying a group of insurance lawyers that had an extremely strong pedigree and acted for a very similar client base to the existing Clyde & Co clients.’
In December, Burns said he expected Clydes will be close to being a $100m business in the US at the end of this financial year. In the last financial year the US contributed 12% of the firm’s turnover, or around £53.7m.
Burns added: ‘We don’t expect this to be the end of our expansion in the US. We are looking at other opportunities.’
The growth follows Clydes’ expansion into Miami in May last year with the acquisition of five-partner strong litigation firm Thornton Davis & Fein.
madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk