Lateral hiring saw a notable pickup during the first quarter of 2024, with partner moves across sectors from litigation to corporate, finance, and restructuring, to ESG, energy and competition.
Global London firms were especially busy during this period, often to the detriment of their Magic Circle peers. While Paul Weiss has been making headline-grabbing hires, Skadden, McDermott, Kirkland & Ellis, and Paul Hastings have also seen considerable movement over the last two months.
Litigation and regulatory
Paul Hastings strengthened its investigations, white collar, complex litigation, and arbitration practices with a double hire from Latham & Watkins. Oliver Browne, who was at Latham for 18 years, serving recently as the London co-chair of the litigation and trial department, will be joined by his colleague Stuart Alford KC. Alford specialises in white-collar crime and was at Latham for seven years. Before joining the firm, he spent four years at the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) as head of banking fraud.
Meanwhile, Ashurst has strengthened its disputes and investigations offering with the hire of Legal 500 Hall of Famer for white-collar crime, Judith Seddon. Moving from Dechert, Seddon has built a practice advising corporate clients in some of the most complex and high-profile investigations conducted by the SFO and Financial Conduct Authority in the UK and by global prosecuting authorities. Previously, she has been a partner at Ropes & Gray and Clifford Chance (CC).
Skadden made a play for former Linklaters partner Sebastian Barling who has now joined the firm’s financial institutions regulatory group. A Legal 500 Next Generation partner for financial services: non-contentious and regulatory, he has experience advising financial services clients on UK and EU regulations. His move adds to Linklaters’ woes, with the firm seeing an exodus of partners in 2023. Twelve partners left the firm last year according to Edwards Gibson’s annual partner moves report.
Corporate
Senior private equity partner Graham White left Fried Frank to join McDermott. White was Fried Frank’s managing partner until 2017, and head of the firm’s private equity practice until his departure. He moved to Fried Frank in 2014. While at Kirkland he was considered to be the de facto head of the London office after joining from Linklaters in 2006. In a statement, McDermott managing partner Hamid Yunis said that White ‘will work closely with me, our London transactional heads and our global senior leadership to help grow the firm’s presence and transactional capabilities in the UK market and provide senior level support to our practices.’
McDermott also hired Cooley cross-border M&A head Michal Berkner in February, further bolstering its transactional practices in London. Moving from Cooley, her clients include strategic and private equity buyers and sellers in public and private transactions and she led the cross-border M&A practice, including negotiated and unsolicited transactions and joint ventures. She is recommended in the Legal 500 for her work on mid-market deals and her experience covers the life sciences, healthcare and technology sectors.
Paul Weiss continued to plough ahead with its London expansion plans, appointing private equity M&A specialist Oliver Marcuse to its partnership. Marcuse, who made partner at CC in May 2022, has experience acting on transactions from leveraged buyouts to secondaries for clients including CVC and Cinven. He undertook a secondment at the latter.
The firm also appointed Matthew Hearn to its London M&A practice. Formerly at Linklaters, where he made partner last year, the move is Paul Weiss’ fourth partner hire from Linklaters, following Dan Schuster-Woldan in January, Nicole Kar in December, and Will Aitken-Davies in September.
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett made a double hire from Weil, taking Paul Hibbert and Emma Serginson. Both are infrastructure financing specialists, ranked as Legal 500 Leading Individuals in this practice area.
Elsewhere, Reed Smith strengthened its private equity and corporate transactions group in London, appointing Tom Whelan from McDermott. He was formerly the head of the firm’s private equity and corporate transactions group.
Fried Frank bolstered its London private equity practice with a triple hire from Goodwin. Christian Iwasko, Michelle Tong, and Priya Rupal join the firm after a three year stint at Goodwin, bringing with them experience at Sidley and Kirkland.
King & Spalding appointed senior capital markets partner Peter Schwartz from Paul Hastings. After spending nearly a decade at Paul Hastings, the move sees Schwartz reunite with his former colleagues Richard Kitchen, Amin Doulai, and Alon Blitz, who moved to King & Spalding in 2022.
In New York, Freshfields made headway with its US strategy, hiring private equity M&A partners Neal Reenan and Ian Bushner from Latham.
Reenan joined as global co-head of private capital alongside Charles Hayes in London and Arend von Riegen in Frankfurt. Prior to joining Latham’s Chicago office in March 2020, he spent 17 years at Kirkland.
Meanwhile, Bushner joined the firm as head of US private capital. He also did a stint at Kirkland, joining in 2014, and helping to set up the firm’s Boston office in 2017.
Finance
In March, prior to the A&O Shearman tie-up going live, Shearman & Sterling’s Europe managing partner and EMEA finance team leader Ward McKimm announced his retirement from the firm.
‘Shearman & Sterling and Ward McKimm jointly confirm that, after a nearly 30-year career as a leading high-yield and leveraged finance lawyer based in London, he has decided to retire,’ a firm statement said.
A member of the Legal 500 Hall of Fame for high-yield finance in London, McKimm joined Shearman’s New York office in 1997 before relocating to London in 1999 and making partner in 2015. He moved to Kirkland in 2011, then to Freshfields in 2015, before rejoining Shearman in 2018. He was instrumental in positioning the merger.
‘A&O has an international outlook, its IP network across Europe and the US provides exciting opportunities for my practice and me generally.’
Gemma Barrett, Allen & Overy
Meanwhile, Allen & Overy (A&O) added John Goldfinch as a partner in its global structured finance practice. Goldfinch, who joins from Milbank ahead of the A&O Shearman merger, is a structured finance specialist with a particular focus on collateralised loan obligations.
He is joined by a team of four Milbank senior associates: Adrian Kwok, Peter West, Eleanor Cripps and Alexandra Wells. A&O has positioned private capital as a key strategic focus for the firm, with its private capital revenue growing by over 60% over the past two years.
Kirkland hired Legal 500 Leading Individual Marwa Elborai from A&O. Elborai, who joins the firm’s London capital markets team, is US qualified, and focuses her practice on high-yield bonds, complex corporate financings and leveraged finance transactions. She joined A&O, after moving from Shearman.
Kirkland also added Alex Amos to its London investment funds group. Moving from Macfarlanes, he is experienced in structuring alternative investments and working with real assets and other strategies across various fund products. Kirkland also bolstered its debt finance practice with the hire of partner Vanessa Xu from A&O. Xu, whose practice specialises in advising financial sponsors on cross-border leveraged finance transactions, is a Legal Business one to watch for debt finance.
Meanwhile, CC has appointed Blake Jones to its finance team. He joins from Paul Hastings, having previously worked at Linklaters.
Elsewhere, David Irvine, Linklaters’ co-head of leverage finance, has moved to Gibson Dunn, with his private equity and cross-border financing expertise set to strengthen the firm’s finance practice.
Restructuring
Paul Hastings bolstered its European financial restructuring group in London with the addition of Jessica Ling. Joining from Akin, she focuses on advising bondholders, ad hoc committees, credit funds, hedge funds, institutional investors, and insolvency practitioners in complex cross-border restructurings and special situations.
‘I was attracted by the prospect of working alongside talented colleagues as well as the entrepreneurship and collaborative spirit senior management have for the firm’s European and broader global financial restructuring practice. I am excited for the opportunity to grow my own cross-border, creditor-side restructuring practice on the elite platform that the global firm offers,’ she said.
IP
Gemma Barrett has joined A&O’s IP practice, moving from life science specialist, Bristows. ‘A&O has an international outlook, its IP network across Europe and the US provides exciting opportunities for my practice and me generally,’ Barrett said.
ESG and energy
Kirkland appointed Rebecca Perlman to its ESG and impact practice group in London as a partner. This follows a 12-year stint at Herbert Smith Freehills from Perlman, where she headed the firm’s UK, US, and EMEA operations and was global head of sustainable and impact investment.
Meanwhile, Mayer Brown bolstered its global energy group with the appointment of former CC partner, Massimo Amoruso, to its global energy group.
Antitrust
Paul Weiss launched a Brussels practice in April with the hire of antitrust partners Richard Pepper and Ross Ferguson.
Moving from Macfarlanes, Pepper has experience advising on cartel and behavioural investigations, global merger control and foreign direct investment. He advised Dow on its merger with DuPont and Telefónica on a joint venture with Liberty Global to form Virgin Media O2.
Ferguson, who moved from Simpson Thacher, has built a practice focusing on cross-border transactions, EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation filings, antitrust investigations and foreign direct investment reviews. His standout mandates include advising Refinitiv on its acquisition by the London Stock Exchange Group and KKR on its acquisition of ContourGlobal.