Travers Smith is opening a new base in Brussels in a rare instance of international expansion for the City firm.
The new office, which is set to open in April this year, will become the London firm’s only other international base, with the launch coming alongside the closure of its Paris office, which has been in operation since 1999.
In a statement, the firm said there will be no redundancies and that all staff currently working in Paris ‘will be treated as part of the firm’s London office’.
The new Brussels base will be led by the firm’s head of competition Stephen Whitfield and partner Nigel Seay – who previously led the competition practice before being succeeded by Whitfield in July last year.
Whitfield has been at Travers for 14 years, joining from Taylor Wessing in 2011 and making partner in 2016, while Seay has been at the firm since 2006, when he joined from Linklaters, before making partner a year later.
The duo will divide their time between Brussels and London, supported by the firm’s London-based competition bench. The firm is not set to make any additional hires for the opening, but expects to consider expansion in future.
The opening is an extremely uncommon instance of international expansion for Travers, a firm with a long-held strategy of focusing its efforts on its main London office. The firm’s former managing partner, David Patient, told LB in a 2019 interview that ‘the decision not to plant flags around the globe is part of our success.’
However, an on-the-ground presence in Brussels is seen as increasingly vital for firms with a strong competition practice. Other firms to have launched there recently include Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which followed up its English law launch in 2023 with a move into Brussels last year.
Meanwhile, Slaughter and May and Macfarlanes, the firms most commonly mentioned alongside Travers due to their similar international approaches, both have outposts in Brussels. Slaughters has been in Brussels since 2007, while Macfarlanes opened a base there in 2017 after poaching a three-strong competition team from King & Wood Mallesons.
The international expansion marks a busy March for Travers. The firm has recently welcomed funds specialist John Daghlian, a former O’Melveny and Akin partner who has come on board as a senior consultant to the asset management group; as well as Jeremy Dennison, who is returning to the firm as a partner in the private equity and financial sponsors group, following a seven-year stint as general counsel at mid-market private equity firm Livingbridge.
Dennision had previously spent five years as an associate at the firm and almost three years as a senior associate in two separate stints between 2007 and 2018.
Travers has been through a period of upheaval in recent years, with 17 partners departing during 2023 and 2024, although the firm’s most recent financial results saw the firm break the £200m barrier for the first time, with profit per equity partner increasing by 18% from £1.07m to £1.3m.
Managing partner Edmund Reed, whose second three-year term as managing partner begins in July this year, acknowledged the recent disruption in an interview with LB last year, but expressed confidence in the firm’s future direction, asserting that ‘external noise had calmed down’ and that the firm’s partners were ‘aligned and pushing together’.
The firm is also set to move into new London offices in Stonecutter Court in early 2026.
