Nearly a year in the offing, Reed Smith has opened its second German office with a bang, hiring a total of seven partners from Mayer Brown; Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and Jones Day to launch the firm in Frankfurt.
Ten years after first arriving in Germany with an office in Munich, Reed Smith has opened in one of Europe’s largest financial centres with partners in finance, corporate, regulatory, private equity and real estate.
Tamara Box, chair of Reed Smith’s financial industry group, told Legal Business that ‘just being able to grow Munich was not going to be good enough to serve our financial services clients’.
‘We needed more capability. We do a lot of work through our Munich office already but there’s no substitute for meandering across the street and running in to see your clients.’
M&A partner Andreas Jürgens and restructuring partner Volker Kammel join the firm from Jones Day. They are joined by Mayer Brown’s Dirk-Peter Flor and Simon Grieser, who are both finance partners.
Reed Smith has also moved to pick up real estate partner Martin Meissner from Orrick, which announced earlier this year that it will cut the size of its German network in half by closing its Frankfurt and Berlin offices.
The team is completed by Willkie Farr’s Rolf Hünermann, who led the firm’s German compliance and enforcement group, and M&A partner Octávio de Sousa, who has a strong client base in private equity. Hünermann joined Willkie in 2007 from Clifford Chance as part of a five-lawyer switch and made partner in the process.
Opened on 1 June, Reed Smith’s Frankfurt office is led by former Munich managing partner Stefan Kugler, a capital markets specialist who sits on the firm’s executive committee. The hires take the total number of partners across Reed Smith’s German operation to 20, with 13 partners currently working out of Munich.
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk