Bakers and DLA lose Amsterdam lawyers to financial services start-up
A team of lawyers drawn largely from the Amsterdam offices of Baker & McKenzie and DLA Piper has launched a new firm focusing solely on financial services law.
Bart Joosen
FMLA - Financial Markets Lawyers - is due to officially open its doors on 23 September. The firm is led by Bart Joosen, formerly head of finance and projects finance at DLA Piper in the Netherlands.
Joosen is joined by fellow partners Ella van Kranenburg, previously an associate at Baker & McKenzie, and Ben Baldwin, previously in-house at GE Artesia Bank.
Three DLA Piper associates as well as lawyers from Baker & McKenzie, GE Artesia and AON Hewitt Associates complete the 10-strong legal team at FMLA.
The firm will advise on all aspects of non-contentious financial services law, including banking, insurance, asset management and pensions. It is aiming to focus particularly on regulatory advisory work.
Joosen said: “What we want to achieve is a logical offering with clients that are struggling with the information overload of new regulation and to give them the ability to have a focused service of what’s relevant for their sector of the financial markets.”
He said the firm would grow over the next two years to around 20 lawyers. One area in particular that was likely to expand was the provision of insurance advice, with the likelihood of another partner focusing on insurance law.
“We believe there’s going to be a massive need for advice in the insurance sector,” Joosen added.
Readers' comments (1)
Anonymous | 2-Sep-2011 3:41 pm
This kind of thing is spreading like wildfire. If only the so called 'big firms' would take a leaf out of the book of those of us thriving on the high street, such as Field Grieb, and look after and compensate their staff properly, then such wilful migrations would be a thing of the past.
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