Talent scouts

With the City’s law firms bogged down by plummeting profits and disaffected partners, the Americans have seized the chance to hire some serious big cheeses. Here, LB names our top ten laterals of the year

If you thought one of the most turbulent 12-month periods that the legal market has ever seen would result in partners hunkering down and getting on with whatever work they could find, then think again. Since our last Global London survey a year ago, no fewer than 64 partners have opted to up sticks and join US firms on this side of the Atlantic, and not all of them were moving because they were pushed.

In fact, if the recruiters are to be believed, the City’s lateral recruitment market is buoyant. ‘We think, in general terms, that the number of partner moves is the same now as it was in 2008,’ says Dan Wilkins, a partner at Deacon Search. ‘Partners are moving for a lot less money, and there are people moving onto the market because they have been pushed, which may not have been the case previously. But the American firms have seen it as an opportunity to pick up real talent.’

Nick Holt of SR Search adds: ‘People are more interested in talking now than they were 12 months ago. People who were not looking to move will come and talk if there is a good, credible story to tell. These are partners who were happy where they are, who are now thinking: “Do I really want to be at this firm if management is not dealing with its problems?”’

Slashing partners in a bid to keep up profits is all very well, but it sometimes upsets the people you want to keep. Equally, not doing so can leave your top performers frustrated. In the past 12 months, some big names have jumped ship for pastures new – here’s our pick of the crop.

Maurice Allen and Michael Goetz

Left Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to join Ropes & Gray

Allen and Goetz had been partners in Freshfields’ finance practice for little over a year when they opted to start a UK operation for Boston-headquartered private equity powerhouse Ropes & Gray last October. Having joined the Magic Circle firm in March 2008 from White & Case, their second move in such quick succession was described by both sides as ‘amicable’, and blamed in part on the collapse of work levels in their chosen field of acquisition finance.

At Ropes & Gray they will initially lead the charge building a practice centred on finance, private equity and restructuring, closely aping the firm’s US strengths. Both are now partners – Allen signed a partnership agreement in March having initially joined as a consultant – and they have had early successes on the recruitment side with the hire of partner Jonathan Bloom from White & Case in high yield, and Tony Horspool from Weil, Gotshal & Manges in restructuring, among others.

‘Having the finance in London will be key, with English-law banking and high yield at the heart.’
Michael Goetz, Ropes & Gray

Work-wise, they have got off to a good start too. Allen advised Liberty Global on the issue of a novel high-yield bond by one of its special purpose vehicles, the proceeds of which were on-lent to The Liberty Group through a so-called innovative ‘accordion feature’ in their syndicated bank deal. Goetz worked for the same client on its E2.6bn high-yield bond offering to finance the acquisition of Unitymedia, the German cable company. Allen has also acted for a group of subordinated lenders headed by MezzVest and CVC Cordatus on the restructuring of The Carlyle Group-owned business Zodiac Marine, and Goetz worked alongside US colleagues to advise Berkshire Partners, Bain Capital and Advent International on the $1.1bn acquisition of SkillSoft, one of the first big European public-to-private deals to follow the credit crunch.

Goetz says: ‘This London practice is going to be built around the firm’s core competencies of private equity and debt finance. Having the finance in London will be key, with English-law banking and high yield at the heart.’

Nick Angel

Left Ashurst to join Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy

The coming together of Nick Angel, one-time head of Ashurst’s restructuring practice, and Milbank Tweed’s internationally renowned bankruptcy prowess has created a new transatlantic force working for creditors on global workouts. Milbank Tweed routinely counts among the top three US restructuring teams, alongside Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Kirkland & Ellis, both of whom are more traditionally seen advising debtors, and while its European partners have handled mandates as large as Lehman Brothers and Drax in recent years, Angel adds a much-needed dedicated resource.

‘You walk into situations and introduce Nick, and the people round the table already know him.’
Phillip Fletcher, Milbank

Having built the team at Ashurst from scratch – he was its only restructuring lawyer when he had three years’ post-qualification experience – Angel will now look to add resources to Milbank Tweed London and ‘become a major presence in European restructuring circles’, he says. He had led a charge at Ashurst in recent years to secure more work from hedge funds in restructurings, and that will continue alongside work for big financial institutions at Milbank Tweed.

So far he has handled elements of the global restructurings of Nortel and Lehman for the creditors, a large but confidential mandate involving Dubai World being led out of London, and a number of European distressed situations on behalf of hedge funds.

Phillip Fletcher, a Milbank Tweed London partner, says: ‘Nick is a very credible guy in the local market, and very competent. You walk into most of these situations and introduce him, and the people round the table already know him.’

Bob Charlton

Left Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to join DLA Piper

Bob Charlton retired from Freshfields in May last year, only to join DLA Piper as its new head of EMEA finance and projects four months later. Formerly the head of Freshfields’ finance practice in London from 2005 to 2007, and then leader of the practice for the Middle East and Africa, he brings much-needed gravitas and management experience to the DLA role, and will spearhead a new strategic thrust.

While DLA’s traditional client relationships centre on UK banks like Barclays, The Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, it is hoped Charlton will add more investment banking names to the roster.

Charlton says: ‘The key point is relevance – for a finance practice to be successful it needs to be relevant to the rest of the firm. Within Freshfields, finance had to work very well alongside that corporate engine room, and here it’s important that finance has a strong internal reputation as well as external. It’s also about co-operation and sharing among this large group of offices. We need to bring them together and make sure that the big banking clients use us in four or five offices rather than one or two.’

‘The key point is relevance – for a finance practice to be successful it needs to be relevant to the rest of the firm.’
Bob Charlton, DLA Piper

Sir Nigel Knowles, DLA’s joint chief executive and managing partner, adds: ‘We are increasingly moving into the circles and areas that the Magic Circle firms have dominated, so to get someone who has experience of working in those firms before to lead the charge is great.’

Stephen Rodney of Fox Rodney Search, who handled Charlton’s move, says: ‘With Bob’s hire, DLA made a quantum leap in the quality of leadership of its finance practice. Bob has already been able to open doors with many, until now, aspirational clients.’

Karl Clowry, Conor Downey, Michelle Duncan, Justin Jowitt, Thomas O’Riordan, Christian Parker and Charles Roberts

Left Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft to join Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker

The departure of a seven-partner team of structured finance lawyers, litigators, restructuring experts and real estate finance lawyers wrought a heavy blow to Cadwalader last February, but their arrival at Paul Hastings marked a significant strengthening of its European practice. At a time when investing in structured finance was at best risky, the leap put London corporate finance at the heart of the Los Angeles-based firm’s strategy.

Ronan O’Sullivan, a longstanding Paul Hastings partner in the City, says: ‘The Cadwalader move bought Paul Hastings a critical mass in London. It was ambitious and it raised eyebrows in a very positive way from the firm’s perspective, and now we are properly embedded and integrated and looking for further partners to build out the offering and develop our corporate practice.’

‘We wanted to go to a more exciting platform – one where we could grow.’
Karl Clowry, Paul Hastings

Since arriving, the team has worked on deals that have included a number of restructurings, such as Four Seasons Health Care and the White Tower commercial mortgage-backed securitisation (CMBS), pulling together corporate, finance, tax, restructuring and structured finance expertise. Most recently, a team led by Charles Roberts and Karl Clowry worked for Capita Asset Services in the Fleet Street Finance Two CMBS transaction, which was the first European CMBS deal to extend the maturity date on CMBS notes.

Clowry says: ‘We wanted to go to a more exciting platform – a platform where we could grow. There is much more overlap between the seven partners and the rest of the firm here, and there is much more of a critical mass of work within the office and also within Europe.’

Chris Kandel, Brian Conway, Sam Hamilton and Jayanthi Sadanandan

Left White & Case to join Latham & Watkins

When the co-head of White & Case’s London banking team, Chris Kandel, announced he was to join Latham with a team of three other partners at the start of February, it was the combination of one of the world’s top high-yield practices with his leveraged loan capability that got the market talking. That and the fact that his relationships with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank looked likely to only prosper further in his new firm.

Kandel began talking to Latham through former colleague Christopher Hall, who is now a partner in the firm’s London banking team and with whom he was previously a partner at O’Melveny & Myers. The story proved compelling: ‘What I mainly focus on is acquisition and leveraged loan finance,’ Kandel says, ‘and there I have always competed head-on with the Magic Circle. What Latham adds to the offering, in addition to a very fine existing leveraged finance loan practice, is the leading high-yield practice in Europe, plus a very similar profile in New York, where they have one of the leading high-yield practices.’

‘What Latham adds to the offering is the leading high-yield practice in Europe, plus a very similar profile in New York.’
Chris Kandel, Latham & Watkins

Hall adds: ‘For a long time it’s been the dream to have a complete three-legged tripod of a very strong broad bench in banking, plus the top high-yield practice in Europe, plus a very strong restructuring practice that is the top one in Europe. The response that we have had from clients to this so far has been extremely favourable.’

Kandel claims to have received four ‘very material instructions’ in his first few weeks at the firm, though he declined to comment on specific client relationships.

Jonathan Kelly

Left Simmons & Simmons to join Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton

After a sabbatical from Simmons last summer, the head of the firm’s finance litigation practice Jonathan Kelly returned in search of a new challenge. Having been approached by Cleary about a move in the past, he received a second call and decided to investigate it further. After considering possibilities at other American firms and a few English competitors, he decided on Cleary and will start work there in early April.

‘The way I look at it, and the way Cleary looks at it, is it has a tremendously strong litigation and regulatory practice across the world, with finance litigation in New York, regulatory litigation in Washington DC and Brussels, and litigators across its European network,’ Kelly says. ‘But it doesn’t have anything of the type that I could offer in English law, so first and foremost the driver is to plug that gap in its network.’

‘Cleary doesn’t have anything of the type that I could offer in English law, so first and foremost the driver is to plug that gap in its network.’
Jonathan Kelly, Cleary Gottlieb

Kelly brings with him existing strong relationships with financial institutions such as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, and while his focus will remain on the large banks, he will also seek to secure sovereign work and Russian mandates by mining the Cleary client base.

‘Where I want to position Cleary is not in trying to be all things to all men,’ he says. ‘We are not trying to do every piece of litigation that comes along, but when Goldman Sachs, UBS, Bank of America and other such clients have a need here, we will service that need.’

Paul Maher

Left Mayer Brown for Greenberg Traurig Maher

Paul Maher was vice chairman at Mayer Brown before quitting in April 2009 following a fall-out over strategy. After a raft of discussions with potential suitors about his next move – including offers of chief executive roles, private equity and general counsel posts – he opted to join Miami-headquartered Greenberg Traurig and launch its London operation in June.

It was a meeting with Greenberg Traurig’s then president Richard Rosenbaum that sealed the deal. ‘He said I could have a blank sheet of the paper, and he wanted my name on it because he said they weren’t known in the market but I was,’ Maher says. ‘His view was start with a couple of people, allow them to be autonomous, and build it through organic growth, giving people room to breathe. And he said we are as much a business as we are a law firm, so let’s build a new model.’

For Maher, that means an absolute focus on client service. ‘The core proposition is really to focus on improving the client experience at every level,’ he says. He has grown the team to 16 partners, with hires including Lyndon Norley from Kirkland & Ellis, and worked for the Cosmen family as the largest shareholders of National Express in the furore surrounding the company’s £360m rights issue. Other clients that have followed him include Rentokil Initial and AstraZeneca.

‘The core proposition is really to focus on improving the client experience at every level.’
Paul Maher, Greenberg Traurig Maher

Much has been made of Maher’s plan to float the practice when the legislation allows. He says: ‘Do I think floating a law firm is a good idea? Yes, I do actually. I don’t rule it out, but it’s far too early to say. It gives you the opportunity to structure, both from a capital structure and a financing point of view, a legal services business in a different way. It also gives you some of the tools that corporates have that we don’t, not just access to the capital markets but much more transparent ownership of the business, so that you can offer more imaginative career structures. There’s an opportunity for having all your staff with ownership, and the potential for wealth creation.’

Maher became interested in the topic after sharing a flight with Justice Secretary Jack Straw and discussing the government’s proposals. He adds: ‘It gets away from the annual cash basis that I have always been a critic of, where law firms basically try to get as much cash out to the partners each year, which means it takes a very enlightened law firm to really invest in the future. But there are obviously very serious issues about how a law firm as a public company would operate from a regulatory perspective, which need to be thought through.’

Adam Signy

Left Clifford Chance to join Simpson Thacher & Bartlett

Adam Signy was an M&A partner at CC for more than 20 years and was one of the firm’s biggest names when he quit in May 2009 to join Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Becoming the firm’s first English law-qualified deal partner, and with a background working for the likes of Candover and Standard Life, he joined an 11-partner London office with a brief to handle the UK law elements of transactions thrown off by the firm’s global M&A franchise.

Though Signy declined to comment for this feature, it is clear he has hit the ground running, and has successfully assisted the firm holding onto more elements of its European deals for private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co and The Blackstone Group. The firm continues to outsource many aspects of its transactions to English law firms, but is striving to keep a bigger share of the strategic M&A and debt finance pieces.

Signy was a member of the team that acted for Blackstone in its purchase of a 50% stake in London’s Broadgate Circle from British Land in a joint venture deal valued at £2.13bn, and in January took the lead role for KKR when it bought pet supplies chain Pets at Home for almost £1bn from Bridgepoint.

On non-UK deals, Signy provided the UK law advice to a consortium led by Primus Financial in the acquisition of Nan Shan Life Insurance Company in Taiwan from AIG for $2.15bn in cash.

As one headhunter points out: ‘Signy’s move was one of the most significant hires of last year. I never thought he would go from CC – he’d been there forever – and it has clearly shifted Simpson Thacher’s position in the UK market.’

Simpson Thacher remains on the lookout for a second English law-qualified M&A partner to work alongside him.

Julian Stait

Left DLA Piper to join Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy

In April 2009, New York’s Milbank Tweed hired litigation partner Julian Stait from DLA Piper, where he had been a partner since 1996 and had served as both head of the technology, media and communications practice between 2000 and 2005, and as global co-head of litigation and arbitration from 2005 to 2007.

Stait came on board with a remit to build the firm’s English-law contentious capabilities. Stait says: ‘I know Laurence Jacobs, who heads up the transactional communications and technology practice here, and he was very keen on having a contentious aspect to that practice. Plus, there’s an opportunity to set up a mainstream litigation and arbitration practice in the London office, which is a huge part of what the firm does internationally.’

‘There’s an opportunity to set up a mainstream litigation and arbitration practice in the Milbank Tweed London office.’ Julian Stait, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy

Stait will look to capture English-law disputes work from the firm’s strong practices around the world, and says clients have been very positive about his move. He continues to act for Hewlett-Packard in its dispute with BSkyB, which is now at appeal and is the largest technology dispute ever to hit the UK courts, and also works with clients including TopUp TV, Cable & Wireless and Fortis Insurance.

Since joining, Stait has worked on the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, where the firm is advising the creditors’ committee, on arbitrations for an Indian conglomerate and for one of the world’s biggest investment funds. He says: ‘The business model was me bringing on board a number of client relationships, opening up those relationships to other parts of the firm, and also helping to exploit the potential for other major dispute resolution work within the firm.’

Graeme Ward

Left Ashurst to join Latham & Watkins

Latham kicked off 2010 with the hire of its eighth London M&A partner in the shape of Graeme Ward, a partner with Ashurst for 13 years and former head of its German practice. With a diverse practice encompassing private equity, public and private M&A, equity capital markets and restructuring work, Ward has done a number of deals for buyout group Candover in recent years.

He says he was attracted by Latham’s platform: ‘There are a number of clients that I work with who are interested in a strong European platform, the quality that this firm has in capital markets, and the crossover of US and UK expertise. We are in a situation where lawyers have to be a lot more creative in terms of the financing of transactions, and this firm is at the cutting edge of those developments.’

‘Lawyers have to be a lot more creative in terms of financing, and this firm is at the cutting edge.’
Graeme Ward, Latham & Watkins

Clients have welcomed his move, he adds: ‘Latham is a very well-known brand, particularly in the private equity and restructuring space, so the reaction has been very positive.’

Mike Bond, a legacy Latham M&A partner, says: ‘We are looking at a market where one of the busiest areas is high yield, and the debt capital markets expertise of this firm is a real advantage. We saw this as a great opportunity to strengthen the bench that we have here.’

The London M&A team counts Qatar Investment Authority as one of its key clients, and last year advised the client on deals including its £3.8bn investment in Barclays and the subsequent sale of half its stake. LB