Madeleine Farman on a rare team move between London-based international players
In one of the most significant team hires between major City players for some time, a group of five Paris corporate partners – collectively responsible for a book of business worth £8m – is moving from Ashurst to Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
The news came as Sidley Austin made a bold move for a seven-partner private equity (PE) team from Kirkland & Ellis’s Munich office.
Ashurst corporate partner Nicolas Barberis led talks that began with Freshfields around six months ago. He will join alongside former Ashurst board member and key leveraged finance specialist Laurent Mabilat with partners Guy Benda, Yann Gozal and Stéphanie Corbière.
The Ashurst team, which counts Charterhouse Capital Partners as a key client, has generated annual billings of around £8m in recent years. Benda and Barberis led a team including Mabilat, which advised Charterhouse on the purchase of French technology company Sagemcom from The Carlyle Group for a reported €400m in October last year. The partners also advised Charterhouse in November 2015 on the acquisition of French pharmaceutical group Cooper, which is valued at around €700m.
One former Ashurst partner commented: ‘It’s a good group. They’re a good core corporate finance team with finance, private equity and M&A. Freshfields is not particularly strong in Paris.’
The departure will put a significant dent in Ashurst Paris, which in recent years has generated between £25m and £30m in revenues. Separately, tax partner Nadine Gelli will also leave the office in favour of local law firm De Pardieu Brocas Maffei. Ashurst has lost several partners both in the City and from its international offices over the past year, following disappointing 2015/16 financial results which saw profit per equity partner drop by 19% to £603,000 from £747,000. Turnover also fell 10% to £505m. However, the firm claims profitability is currently on course for a significant rebound in 2016/17.
The former Ashurst partner added: ‘People would say it’s a big blow but at another level it’s just a symptom of Ashurst going in a different direction. You’ve got to think about what might follow; at one level the firm is moving away from its traditional corporate finance background; it’s turned its back on America effectively, and so it is inevitable that people who find the US important are going to think about their futures.’
Refreshing Paris
Ashurst chair Ben Tidswell (pictured) expects to bulk up the Paris office before the beginning of May, bringing in three to four new partners through lateral hires and internal promotions. It is unlikely, however, that the recruits will be PE lawyers. The office currently has 18 partners, which will whittle down to 12 following the departures.
‘We’re always concerned if we lose good partners, but in terms of wider impact it was not a particularly integrated team; they’ve run a business with a French market focus for a small number of clients and they aren’t clients we do a huge amount of work for outside of Paris. In that sense, the knock-on implications for the business are not very significant at all. It’s very, very manageable in economic terms.’
‘The knock-on implications for the business are not very significant. It’s very manageable in economic terms.’
Ben Tidswell, Ashurst
The move will bulk up Freshfields’ Paris offering after it lost a four-partner team to Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in April last year. Corporate partner Patrick Tardivy, finance partners Emmanuel Ringeval and Hervé Touraine and Paris employment head Emmanuel Bénard left the French office within a week of a four-strong team exiting Freshfields’ Hamburg office to launch a boutique called Chatham Partners. A month later Norton Rose Fulbright picked up tax partner Antoine Colonna d’lstria. The office’s real estate head, Erwan Le Douce-Bercot, is the latest to leave the office in favour of Jones Day in February along with three associates.
However, Paris corporate head Hervé Pisani said Freshfields’ office is committed to growth and enlarging its PE practice was a key priority. ‘This is a big challenge, this is a big team. We haven’t done anything this big in Europe apart from the merger [that formed Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in 2000]. We were both excited by the project but we needed to ensure this would be a success. Having had team and individual discussions, we did feel that this would be a real fit.’
The firm is also currently looking to build out its competition, dispute resolution and litigation and white-collar capabilities in Paris.
A former partner said: ‘The Freshfields Paris office has been a mess for some time. It hasn’t been able to find its niche. It doesn’t surprise me that it would try to make a splash of some sort and reinvigorate the office.’
However, firmwide co-managing partner Stephan Eilers said the shift was down to a re-think of the firm’s European strategy. ‘We’re looking at Europe in a more co-ordinated way. This is not something that is brand new; we started last year by bringing in Alan Mason as regional managing partner from corporate and private equity. This partner move shows that the strategy is working – closer co-ordination between London, Paris and Germany, which is becoming more important.’
Meanwhile, Sidley’s move for a Kirkland PE team in Munich last month saw it return to its Global 100 rival in dramatic fashion after last February hiring a six-partner deal team from Kirkland’s London office, a rare instance of the Chicago-bred institution losing an equity partner to a rival.
In February veteran partner Volker Kullmann joined with fellow corporate partners Björn Holland, Christian Zuleger, Nicole Schlatter and Marcus Klie, as well as finance partner Markus Feil and tax partner Roderic Pagel. US firms have made aggressive moves in recent months in Continental Europe, including Goodwin Procter, which hired a Paris team from King & Wood Mallesons that controlled about £8m in billings.
madeleine.farman@legalease.co.uk