Clifford Chance boosts French corporate offering with HSF and Willkie Farr hires
Last month saw much strategic decision-making by Legal Business 100 firms located in Paris, with Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) scaling back its offering in the French capital and leaving only a liaison outpost following the departure of French head Antoine-Audoin Maggiar, just eight years after opening. Meanwhile, Magic Circle firm Clifford Chance (CC) has made efforts to boost its Paris offering, having hired longstanding Herbert Smith Freehills’ (HSF) securities partner Alex Bafi and Willkie Farr & Gallagher private equity partner Fabrice Cohen.
Revealed by Legal Business in mid-September, BLP’s decision to close its Paris office leaves the firm with just four European operational offices outside of the UK, including Brussels, Frankfurt, Berlin and Moscow, where firms have been starved of work by international sanctions.
A spokesperson said: ‘BLP has recently completed a review of the corporate finance practice in France. It has been decided that the firm should focus on our corporate finance expertise on servicing clients from our offices in London, Moscow and Asia.
‘Antoine-Audoin Maggiar will remain with the firm on a consultancy basis to ensure a smooth handover.’
Maggiar arrived at BLP in 2006 to launch the firm’s Paris offering, but the office never became a priority. Instead it sought to pull in international work rather than French mandates and had a referral strategy in place to pass work to the firm’s larger offices. BLP’s Paris base will now be reduced to a liaison office, with London-based senior partner Harold Paisner, who is registered with the Paris Bar, continuing to work across the Channel.
‘The firm should focus on our corporate finance expertise from our offices in London, Moscow and Asia.’
CC, meanwhile, has made several laterals in recent weeks to its French offering, including Bafi, who will relocate to Paris as part of the move and join the firm’s finance and capital markets practice in January 2015. Bafi has been at HSF since 2001 after joining from Davis Polk & Wardwell. He is the global relationship partner for Credit Suisse, for which his new firm is on the legal panel for. Speaking to Legal Business, he said his move will ‘allow me to use my languages and run further interesting mandates, and will reinforce CC’s offering in France, Italy, Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East’.
His move follows that of Willkie Farr’s Cohen in the same week. A specialist in private equity transactions, domestic and cross-border M&A and securities law, Cohen counts Europe’s largest commercial aircraft maker Airbus as a longstanding client as well as General Motors.
He brings with him counsel Gabriel Flandin and senior associate Basma Paradin, keeping intact a team that has been together since their days at rival Magic Circle firm Freshfields, where Cohen was the Paris head of corporate, before they joined Watson, Farley & Williams.
sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk