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‘Commitment to London’: Dechert makes up three in the City amid 16-strong partner promotions round

Dechert is continuing a recent spate of investment in its London office with the promotion to partner of three in the City amid a scaled up 16-strong global round.

The Philadelphia-headquartered firm has continued its commercial litigation push by making up Matthew Banham and Timothy Bowden from its white-collar crime bench in London, while tax lawyer Daniel Hawthorne has also been promoted.

The move marks Dechert’s biggest UK investment for some time, having made up only one City partner last year and bypassing London altogether the year before.

The City office has also seen a pacey run of lateral hires recently, recruiting Sidley Austin’s London co-head of disputes Dorothy Cory-Wright to head up its commercial disputes practice in July. The previous month, former senior US federal prosecutor Roger Burlingame joined from Kobre & Kim and in September, Hogan Lovells lost its highly-rated private equity partner Robert Darwin to Dechert’s corporate and life sciences team. The firm chalked up 2017 revenues of $977.9m in a seventh consecutive year of growth and now has around 1,000 lawyers across its 27 offices globally.

London management committee member Jason Butwick said: ‘These promotions reflect the firm’s commitment to London and its importance to the firm. Our new partners represent the next generation of Dechert lawyers and further strengthen our global capability.’

Nathalie.tidman@legalease.co.uk

The full list of partner promotions, which take effect on 1 January 2019, are:

Matthew Banham, white-collar crime, London

Timothy Bowden, white-collar crime, London

Matthew Carter, corporate and securities, Washington DC

Michael Darby, corporate and securities, Philadelphia

Christopher Desmond, finance and real estate, Boston

Darshak Dholakia, international trade, Washington DC

Matthew Fischer, finance and real estate, New York

Sam Gilbert, finance and real estate, Boston

Gennady Gorel, finance and real estate, Philadelphia

Daniel Hawthorne, tax, London

Angela Liu, securities litigation, Chicago

Stephen Pratt, corporate and securities, Philadelphia

Anne-Charlotte Rivière, corporate and securities, Paris

Erica Stein, international arbitration, Brussels

Jonathan Stott, corporate and securities, Philadelphia

Yang Wang, corporate and securities, Hong Kong