Last week saw a trio of firms bolster their international offerings through lateral hires, including Clyde & Co, US firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and New Law provider Halebury.
Clyde & Co made a re-hire with commodity and trade finance specialist Robert Parson who returns to the firm from Reed Smith, where he served as a partner in the energy and natural resources group. Prior to joining Reed Smith, Parson spent six years at Clydes.
A specialist in commodity and trade finance law; structuring deals and complex cross border financing arrangements for major banks and traders, Parson returns to the firm’s London office to ‘further enhance [its] global trade finance team.’
Meanwhile, as regulators continue to tighten the rules on deals that pose a threat to competition, US firm Paul Weiss added a quartet of antitrust lawyers to its roster in Washington DC from rival Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft to meet client demand.
The four-strong team includes partner Rick Rule who once led the antitrust division of the US Justice Department. Rule will serve as co-chairman of the firm’s antirust practice and will be joined by Jonathan Kanter, Joseph Bial and Andrew Forman.
Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp said: ‘With today’s heightened regulatory scrutiny of M&A transactions, intense regulatory focus on antitrust enforcement and increased private antitrust litigation, a top-flight merger clearance team and world-class antitrust litigators are indispensable assets.’
Lastly, in the UK, alternative legal services provider Halebury announced it has hired three in-house lawyers including Jan Hawgood from Chevron, Katherine Kennedy from payment systems company VocaLink and Neeta Mashru from the BBC.
The firm, which provides specialises in providing senior legal resourcing solutions for listed corporations and fast-growing SMEs, now houses 31 lawyers.
Transactions lawyer Hawgood spent eight years in-house at Chevron, where she was based in the UK and Asia Pacific. Commercial lawyer Kennedy spent eight years at VocaLink which operates the UK infrastructure for payment systems including Bacs and LINK. She negotiated the execution or renewal of most major contracts.
Mashru, having joined in May, spent 17 years at the broadcaster as a commercial lawyer and acted as lead lawyer on multimillion pound outsourcing procurements including television playout services. She was also responsible for drafting and negotiating a number of commercial agreements and worked on the structured financing of BBC Broadcasting House.
Halebury chair Janvi Patel said: ‘Crucially, they all have a strong commercial mind-set and will offer not just legal advice but strategic business intelligence.’
sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk