Gibson Dunn has set down a marker in London with the hire of high-profile Sullivan & Cromwell finance and restructuring duo Presley Warner and Chris Howard.
The duo – who also both previously worked together at Freshfields – leave Sullivan after more than a decade at the elite US firm, which is renowned for rarely losing partners.
Warner, the head of the US firm’s European credit and leveraged finance practice, has spent almost 14 years at at Sullivan after joining from Freshfields in 2011. He left the magic circle firm not long after Howard had departed to join Linklaters, where he spent just over two years before moving to Sullivan to be reunited with Warner.
Howard leads Sullivan’s European restructuring practice and is recognised in the Legal 500 Hall of Fame for restructuring and insolvency. He is dual New York and English law qualified, and has handled an array of high-profile mandates, including advising the debtors of FTX Trading in its Chapter 11 proceedings, while on the creditor side, he advised Barclays on Cineworld’s Chapter 11 restructuring.
Warner is also dual-qualified, and has worked with clients including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Apax and Hellman & Friedman. Last year the duo were part of the firm’s team advising Nofe Investment on the restructuring plan of Project Lietzenburger Strasse HoldCo, a real estate project in Germany which involved the restructuring of more than €1bn of secured debt.
At Gibson Dunn, the duo will work alongside restructuring and finance partner Lisa Stevens, who was recruited from Freshfields last year. She is currently the US firm’s only dedicated restructuring and reorganisation partner in London listed on its website.
In a recent interview with Legal Business, Gibson Dunn’s newly appointed London co-heads Rob Carr and Osma Hudda set out the US firm’s intentions to expand both its transactional and litigation practices. The firm had been widely expected to recruit for its leveraged finance team in the City.
These latest hires follow a series of recent lateral moves for Gibson, including the arrival of David Irvine, the former co-head of leveraged finance at Linklaters, who joined last February, while last year also saw the additions of privacy partner Lore Leitner from Goodwin, private equity partner Will Summers from White & Case, and Jones Day M&A partner Will McDonald.
Gibson has also recently recruited from Sullivan in the US, last year taking on corporate partner George Sampas as co-chair of M&A and head of cross-border M&A. City co-head Carr told LB that London growth is part of the firm’s broader global growth strategy, alongside moves in the Middle East such as the hire of a seven-partner team from White & Case and a three-partner Shearman team to open in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.
Sullivan, meanwhile, is well-known for eschewing the high volume recruitment strategies adopted by many other big firms. Since Howard’s arrival in 2013, the only two lateral hires the US firm has made in London have been Shearman & Sterling corporate partner Jeremy Kutner in 2018 and Allen & Overy private equity partner Karan Dinamani in 2023.
Sullivan has the higher profit per equity partner of the two firms, with $6.25m, ahead of Gibson’s $5.59m.
Gibson Dunn and Sullivan were approached for comment.
