Paul Hastings pulled off two headline lateral hires in London in a week as the US firm strengthens its corporate offering in the City.
Private equity rising star Anu Balasubramanian was the first hire announced, as DLA Piper lost another key dealmaker in the City. The addition will be a major boost to Paul Hastings’ City corporate and private equity practice, with Balasubramanian bringing experience in an array of mid-market work, acting for sponsors such as ABRY Partners, Accel-KKR, Oakley Capital and Aurium Capital Markets.
For DLA this was the latest in a succession of high-profile departures in a month, as the firm saw London real estate partners Laurence Rogers, Neville Wright and Tom Calnan all decamp to McDermott Will & Emery (MWE), while MWE also brought in a team of 50 lawyers from DLA in the US.
For Paul Hastings, this brisk period of City expansion also secured the hire of M&A partner Roger Barron from Linklaters. Barron had been a lifer at the Magic Circle firm, acting on a number of key mandates, such as advising National Grid on its £13.8bn sale of a 61% stake in its gas distribution business, in addition to the £1.1bn acquisition and later £2.5bn disposal of National Grid Wireless.
His arrival sees Paul Hastings increase pressure on the City players in mainstream corporate, with US firms typically finding significant public M&A hires more difficult than recruitment in the private equity space.
‘The two recent hires are emblematic of a real maturity in our office; we think our results compare with anyone. The market shows we’re an extraordinarily well-run firm. In London the focus is usually on the scale – we focus on quality,’ Paul Hastings London office chair Ronan O’Sullivan told Legal Business.
‘Leading M&A mandates are harder to move from the institutional firms. But if you look at the market over the last five years, clients are more interested in the personalities of lawyers than the firms themselves.’
Meanwhile, Kirkland & Ellis dealt another blow to the City elite, making a rare lateral outside the transactional arena to secure global intellectual property (IP) heavyweight Nicola Dagg from Allen & Overy (A&O). Although the hire is not as significant as its move for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer private equity partner David Higgins before Christmas, Dagg joins Kirkland after 12 years at A&O, where she led its global IP operations and established herself as one of the market-leading names in IP – rare for a Magic Circle firm.