Dechert arrival puts Frankfurt in the frame

While the firm has an office in Munich, where Pütz has joined as a partner, it lacks a base in Germany’s financial centre. A decision on opening in the city will be made in the next two months, and if the move gets the go-ahead it will open in the first half of 2011.

“We’d want to start [in Frankfurt] with a respectable number of lawyers,” said Pütz, who was head of SJ Berwin’s German financial markets team. “I know people who are very interested in joining such an interesting project, and we have a lot of Frankfurt clients that we need to ­service from the city.”