Despite the typical summer slowdown of the global lateral recruitment market, there have still been plenty of eye-catching hires. Many of the headline moves have a transatlantic hue as US firms continue to attract top talent in the City, while UK firms have had mixed results in the States.
In London, Latham & Watkins’ banking vice-chair Ross Anderson and fellow partners Mo Nurmohamed, Karan Chopra and Rob Davidson joined Paul Hastings in July. The team brings a breadth of experience in leveraged finance and direct lending deals, having led on recent high-profile transactions; recent examples include acting for the arrangers of the TLB financing to support Blackstone’s acquisition of Huws Gray, and the arrangers of the financing to support Bain’s acquisition of ITP Aero, a carve out from Rolls-Royce.
Anderson and Nurmohamed (who has been named co-chair of Paul Hastings’ global finance practice) are no strangers to team moves, having both joined Latham as associates alongside partners from White & Case in 2010. The pair said it was important for them to move as a team to a firm with the breadth of expertise to support their practice. They particularly praised Paul Hastings’ ambition for team hires globally, pointing to their impressive US growth, which included the hire of an 18-partner restructuring team from Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in March.
London chair Arun Birla (pictured) said of the additions: ‘It’s a leading team that has joined us and it reflects the momentum we have across our hires here and in New York, for example. We are being very strategic, and they are going to be meaningful strategic investments that are forward looking and take into account the overall macroeconomic and geopolitical trends.’
This continues Paul Hastings’ bullish London growth strategy, which saw 41% revenue growth for 2021. Other additions for 2022 included Jason Brooks to its structured credit team from CMS and private equity partner Tom Cartwright from Morgan Lewis, who joined in June. Birla added: ‘We are not being shy about our aim to be over 200 fee-earners soon, we are taking out more office space. We are very positive about where we are going in London.’
Elsewhere in the City, private equity hires have continued at pace. Mayer Brown has boosted its capabilities with the addition of Paul Rosen from Katten Muchin Rosenman. Perry Yam, head of Mayer Brown’s private equity practice, said: ‘Undoubtedly private equity has proven to be a form of corporate deal that generates valuable work for a number of practices in a firm, so once you’ve attracted and retained confidence in a private equity house, the whole firm benefits, both in transactional work and bolt-on work from their portfolio companies, so we are keen to double up our team in this space.’
Also in this space, Linklaters has lost Daniel Gendron to Willkie Farr, while Tony Downes has joined Sidley from Proskauer.
‘It’s a leading team that has joined us and it reflects the momentum we have across our hires here and in New York.’ Arun Birla, Paul Hastings
Meanwhile, notable hires from key London players recently include White & Case hiring M&A partner Di Yu from Slaughter and May. She brings experience across public and private M&A transactions, joint ventures, equity raisings, large-scale corporate reorganisations and listed company corporate advisory matters. Elsewhere, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has recruited private credit, special situations lending and restructuring partner Lisa Stevens from Kirkland & Ellis.
Across the pond, recently established City disputes boutique Pallas Partners has made its US intentions known with the hire of Duane Loft in New York. Managing partner Natasha Harrison, who launched the firm just five months ago, said that a US base was always going to be an important part of the strategy. ‘What we see now is that everything is on that New York-London axis, so it’s quite unusual to have a UK-only dispute or investigation or arbitration. Often you will be litigating in England while doing discovery in the US, or vice versa, so having that joined up service is really important.’
Loft joins from Boies Schiller Flexner, with a practice that complements the London office and Harrison’s expertise in acting for US hedge funds, investment managers, asset managers and private equity houses in their European litigation. Said Harrison: ‘Duane acts for a lot of my clients in the US already, so his practice is symbiotic to mine. He also has the same value system as me, which is important. He is very collegiate, very collaborative and very entrepreneurial – and just an outstanding lawyer.’
Also in New York, it was two in, one out for Linklaters. After losing US head of cyber security Erez Liebermann to Debevoise in June, it hired structured finance and derivatives duo Joseph Gambino and Peter Williams from Alston & Bird. Gambino and Williams bring expertise in collateralised loan obligation transactions.
Finally, in August, Dechert hired Douglas Mannal and Stephen Zide in New York. The duo joined from Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, and have a breadth of experience acting on both the creditor and debtor sides of bankruptcy and restructuring matters.