Shearman & Sterling’s loss is Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom’s gain after Stephan Hutter, Germany’s pre-eminent capital markets specialist, swapped one US firm for another in February.
Hutter joined Skadden’s Frankfurt office along with fellow partner Katja Kaulamo, gifting the firm the German capital markets capability it has sought for so long.
The duo bring with them a wealth of expertise across Germany, Austria and Switzerland having acted for all of the main issuers in those markets. They recently advised a consortium of BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and J.P. Morgan on the E2bn high-yield offering by Schaeffler Finance.
After a number of years of investment, the move gives Skadden much-needed balance to complement its private equity and M&A teams. For Shearman it is telling that Hutter, who was at the firm for 25 years, is one of the first of the original Shearman partners in Germany to leave its practice. The office has seen a number of departures in the last few years, but no one of his seniority.
‘There are only a handful of teams at the top in Germany and we now have one of them.’
Matthias Jaletzke, Skadden
‘In Germany we have been at the forefront of the market in private equity but not as active in capital markets,’ said Matthias Jaletzke, head of Skadden’s German M&A practice. ‘There are only a handful of teams at the top in Germany and we now have one of them.’
‘If you look at the macro environment today you need a strong corporate platform – the more capacity you have the better,’ says Hutter. ‘We have historically done a lot of financial institutions work so for us to combine a solid global issuer practice with the financial institutions side is an excellent fit.’
The new arrivals give Skadden nine partners in Germany across its Munich and Frankfurt offices. In typical style, the firm has waited patiently for the right people to build its team. The timing couldn’t have been better: while the German equity markets have been fairly quiet for the last two-and-a-half years, commentators suggest that there is IPO work in the pipeline. Hutter said that his team is currently working on half a dozen potential deals.
Shearman is playing down the significance of the loss. The firm has moved quickly to install London-based Richard Price as European capital markets head while Marc Plepelits will lead the German team.
Price said: ‘We have always had a serious practice in Germany with a good mix of debt and equity capital markets that has enabled us to keep busy at all times. We will look at growth but as judiciously as we have done in the past. We brought in Monica McConville in London last year to spearhead our efforts there in that area.’
However, the significance of one of Shearman’s senior German partners leaving is difficult to ignore. Düsseldorf remains the beating heart of Shearman in Germany but Hutter going in Frankfurt leaves a massive hole.
One former colleague of Hutter’s told LB: ‘The fact is that he is the German capital markets lawyer. I can’t think of anyone who occupies the space better than him.’