Top UK firms have increased their New York M&A partner hiring fivefold since 2021, according to transatlantic recruiter Macrae’s 2024 Legalscape report.
The firms collectively hired 11 lateral M&A partners in the city in 2024, compared to two in 2021 and none in 2020.
The figures also show a significant increase in the number of M&A partners being recruited more generally in New York, with the number of M&A laterals to top US, UK, and international firms climbing from 45 in 2021 to 65 in 2004.
UK firms represented 17% of last year’s hires, compared to just 4% of those made in 2021.
New York-based Macrae partner Jon Truster said the increase in M&A recruitment activity is partly down to firms’ willingness to up top-level remuneration.
‘The top of compensation changed at the beginning of last year, to around $25m’, he said. ‘Certain firms were able to take advantage of that. Paul Weiss in particular was able to be quite aggressive, and was a big beneficiary of that.’
Paul Weiss was the most active firm tracked in Macrae’s data, making six M&A partner hires in New York. The steady uptick in compensation has also seen more lateral hiring from traditionally conservative firms like Simpson Thacher, which came in joint third place for 2024 with four hires.
No group of firms has increased its hiring at the rate of the erstwhile magic circle, however.
Legacy Allen & Overy took a different tack with its major transatlantic merger last year – but each of the other three international magic circle firms features among Macrae’s top hirers for New York M&A.
The London-headquartered firms also saw no New York M&A partners leave in 2024, compared to one exit per year in 2023, 2022, and 2020, and two in 2021.
Market perception of the firms’ progress however remains mixed. ‘The magic circle firms are definitely being more aggressive in the US’, said one New York M&A partner at a US firm, before concluding that they remain ‘a work in progress.’
Firms by most New York M&A partner hires
| Firm | New York M&A partners added |
|---|---|
| Paul Weiss | 6 |
| Freshfields | 5 |
| Loeb & Loeb | 4 |
| Simpson Thacher | 4 |
| Clifford Chance | 3 |
| Linklaters | 3 |
| Holland & Knight | 2 |
| Hunton Andrews Kurth | 2 |
Linklaters opened the year with its high-profile January hire of a six-lawyer team from then-Shearman & Sterling, including partners M&A partners George Casey, Heiko Schiwek, and Gregory Gewirtz.
Legal 500 $1bn+ M&A Hall of Famer Casey, now Linklaters’ global chairman of corporate, served as global managing partner at Shearman from 2018, and since joining Linklaters has worked on deals including leading the team that advised Rio Tinto on its $6.7bn acquisition of Arcadium Lithium last October.
Freshfields, meanwhile, was the most active UK firm with five M&A hires, putting it second overall, behind only Paul Weiss.
Its biggest recruits of the year were Latham private equity M&A partners Neal Reenan and Ian Bushner, who joined in March as global private capital co-head and US private capital head respectively.
The firm also added to its junior benches. In January it hired Sanjay Murti, who made partner at Cravath in 2022 – ‘on the junior end, but nonetheless a force to be reckoned with’, according to one commentator – as well as Kirkland partner Steven Li, another Cravath alum, who left that firm in 2021 as a senior associate to join Kirkland as a partner.
It rounded out its number with its June 2024 hire of Kirkland M&A partner Joshua Ayal.
The hires saw Freshfields continue an aggressive New York buildout that has seen it snatch a clutch of high-profile laterals in recent years, from a Cleary team led by Ethan Klingsberg in 2019 through the 2021 hire of Damien Zoubek from Cravath to co-lead the US corporate and M&A practice alongside Klingsberg.
Both Klingsberg and Zoubek are Legal 500 leading partners for $1bn+ deals, with Jenny Hochenberg, who joined from Cravath in 2022, ranked as a next-generation partner.
Klingsberg’s hire has proved pivotal for Freshfields’ US strategy. Already, in 2025, he is leading the team advising Google, once a key client of Klingsberg’s at Cleary, on its prospective acquisition of Wiz, valued at $32bn.
Working with Klingsberg on the deal are M&A partners Denny Kwon, who joined the firm from Covington in Silicon Valley last April, and Li.
Clifford Chance, meanwhile, is in joint fourth place with three hires. The firm hired White & Case partner Chang-Do Gong – now US M&A co-head – in May, in a play that has seen the firm bring over more M&A talent from White & Case into 2025, with Bryan Luchs joining in March and Robert Chung following this week.
In addition to Gong, the firm rounded out its 2024 hires with O’Melveny PE partners David Schultz and Vince Ferrito, in October and November respectively.
