Legal Business‘ National/Regional Firm of the Year, Stevens & Bolton, has underlined its ability to offer City levels of expertise with the hire of David Steinberg, joint leader of Clifford Chance (CC)’s insolvency and restructuring group in London.
Steinberg (pictured) is a ‘very commercial’ partner in CC’s tier-one insolvency and restructuring practice, according to The Legal 500. Having worked at CC for his entire career, including 22 years as partner, he has experience advising debtors, creditors and other stakeholders on cross-border insolvencies, international litigation/asset recoveries and restructuring deals. His CV includes acting for various creditors and customers of the Lehman and MF Global estates on asset recovery, security enforcement, set-off and claims assertion.
Steinberg will start at Stevens & Bolton in early June and will jointly lead its restructuring and insolvency team with current head, Tim Carter.
‘There is a real demand from corporates and financial institutions who, because of the size of the deal or simple pressures on liquidity, baulk at paying top City rates but who nevertheless require sophisticated restructuring and insolvency advice to address complex problems,’ Steinberg said. ‘Stevens & Bolton – with its full-service capability and its impressive bench of lawyers, including many ex-City lawyers, is the ideal platform from which to develop this practice.’
Named National/Regional Firm of the Year at the Legal Business Awards earlier this month, Stevens & Bolton capped another successful year by entering the LB100 in 2015, having increased turnover by 49% over the last five years. As a cohesive 40-partner firm, it is able to leverage strong profitability and its PEP has matched turnover for growth over the last five years, rising from £280,000 to £415,000 – against a margin of 29% – comfortably ahead of the average for all the top 100 law firms.
Its successful model hinges on attracting experienced partners from City firms as well as local competitors, in turn winning strong instructions from significant clients wanting London service levels but not London fees. This has led to its involvement on impressive deals, such as recently advising SABMiller on the $260m sale of various drinks brands to The Coca-Cola Company. In the last few years, the firm has won places on the legal panels for BP, Lloyds Banking Group, Santander and Clydesdale Bank.
Managing partner Ken Woffenden, himself a former corporate partner at Simmons & Simmons, said: ‘David has led a top-tier rated Magic Circle practice and has a fantastic reputation in restructuring and insolvency work…David’s enormous experience in complex restructuring and insolvency work over many years, combined with his excellent market profile, will be a great addition and will help us develop our finance practice into one of the strongest outside the City.’
Steinberg’s appointment follows the recent hire of Clyde & Co senior associate Alex Watt, who joined the firm’s real estate team as a partner last month.
mark.mcateer@legalease.co.uk
