Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has ruffled Allen & Overy (A&O)’s feathers in London after the US litigation specialist hired the Magic Circle firm’s global arbitration chairman Stephen Jagusch and fellow partner Anthony Sinclair in May. The firms are understood to be locking horns over the departure terms, with a deal yet to be struck.
The hires will see Quinn Emanuel launch its own City arbitration practice, to be led by Jagusch. While the firm has already had some success in arbitration work in London, it plans to grow the office to 35 lawyers, of which ten will be partners.
‘It was clear that if we wanted to have a global arbitration practice, we needed to have a presence in London,’ John Quinn, the firm’s founder and managing partner, told LB. ‘We see arbitration as a natural extension of our business. We are careful about who joins our firm: we look for high-quality people.’
Jagusch and Sinclair are a serious coup for Quinn Emanuel. Both are widely respected within the arbitration community and advise on a number of high-profile matters, including bilateral investment treaties and the Energy Charter Treaty.
‘This fits into our desire to grow our London office,’ said London co-managing partner Richard East. Including Jagusch and Sinclair, Quinn Emanuel will have hired five arbitration partners in the last 12 months, including Washington DC-based David Orta from Arnold & Porter and Ivan Marisin and Vasily Kuznetsov, who both joined in Moscow from Clifford Chance. The ambition doesn’t end there.
‘South-East Asia is also very important to us,’ said Quinn. ‘We have no-one on the ground there now but we want one of the top people.’
‘We see arbitration as a natural extension of our business.’
John Quinn, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
While the hires significantly bolster Quinn Emanuel’s already successful London office (revenue skyrocketed by 75% during 2011 to £21.8m from £12.4m the previous year) the news ‘went down like a lead balloon’ at A&O, according to one market source.
As a consequence, A&O is understood to be holding the pair to a 12-month notice period, with both Jagusch and Sinclair placed on gardening leave. Quinn told LB that his firm is currently negotiating the exit terms for both Jagusch and Sinclair, but neither side has come to an agreement.
A&O would not comment on the effect of the departures, or the exit terms imposed on Jagusch and Sinclair. The firm’s global litigation chief Tim House said: ‘We can confirm that Stephen Jagusch and Anthony Sinclair have given notice of their intention to resign from Allen & Overy at the end of the 2013 financial year.’
The recent hires come on the back of a series of raids Quinn Emanuel has made on A&O’s business in recent years, with a string of hires made in Hamburg at the start of May.
Quinn Emanuel took on IP litigator Nadine Herrmann, along with another ten lawyers, to launch its Hamburg office. This is the second time the firm has taken A&O partners in Germany to open its own office. In February 2010, Quinn Emanuel hired A&O IP litigation partner Marcus Grosch in Mannheim.
The California-based firm also hit a raw nerve in 2009 when it took structured finance partner Dan Cunningham from A&O’s New York office. At the time Cunningham was co-head of A&O’s global US practice.
Recruitment specialist Macrae Roxburgh Appleby (MRA) brokered the Jagusch and Sinclair deal for Quinn Emanuel out of both MRA’s London and Californian offices. ‘My theory is that the social contracts within the Magic Circle firms got ripped up as recently as five years ago and while it would seem that lockstep was a job for life, rounds of redundancies mean that partners no longer see it as a partnership,’ said MRA chairman Joe Macrae. ‘Quinn’s pitch is that it is a much more traditional law firm, with very little red tape and a true partnership.’