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A&O bolsters corporate practice as PE star follows Lloyd from Ashurst

He was singled out as one of Ashurst’s rainmakers of the future but private equity specialist Karan Dinamani has become the second high-profile corporate exit to Allen & Overy (A&O) in six months.

Dinamani (pictured) joins Ashurst’s former global head of corporate, commercial and competition Stephen Lloyd, who resigned within weeks of the firm fully integrating with Australian partner Blake Dawson and post-merger management elections. Lloyd joined A&O as co-head of its private equity practice in November.

Dinamani featured in our look last year at the likely rainmakers of 2020, ‘Great bright hopes‘, where Lloyd, who was still at Ashurst at the time, described him as ‘amazing and a complete star of the future’.

In his new role, Dinamani will form part of the Magic Circle’s global private equity group with a focus on private equity transactions from buyouts, sponsor exits and portfolio restructurings to fund establishment, and secondaries to infrastructure private equity.

He was made partner at Ashurst in May 2013 and specialises in cross border M&A and corporate finance transactions, with a particular focus on advising private equity houses. He joins with experience of working on high profile deals for clients including Apax, Nordic Capital and Terra Firma.

A&O London corporate managing partner Richard Browne said: ‘This appointment further strengthens our unified private equity (PE) offering spanning the corporate and finance practices. It comes at a time of increased levels of activity in the sector. Recently, increasing confidence in the markets has triggered a rise in PE-backed IPOs which we expect to continue.’

A spokesperson at Ashurst added: ‘KD [Dinamani] is a talented junior partner who has a good future ahead of him. We will be sorry to see him go but wish him the best of luck.’

Jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk