French M&A boutique takes three partners from Rambaud Martel

Rambaud Martel’s EC competition partner Olivier de Juvigny has quit the firm with two other partners and an associate to join M&A boutique Vivien & Associés.

De Juvigny is teaming up again with Nicolas Vivien and the firm will now be known as Vivien & Juvigny. The pair worked together at Stibbe, before Vivien left to set up his own firm and De Juvigny joined Rambaud Martel.

“We are pretty certain that there is room for a general practice firm with a focus on M&A, which has the standards of larger firms but with the availability and billing rates of a smaller firm,” said Vivien. The firm will now comprise eight partners and nine associates.

Young Rambaud Martel partners Iñaki Saint-Esteban and Etienne Gousse join De Juvigny at the renamed firm despite having only been elevated to the Rambaud partnership last year.

Rambaud had tried to address the ambitions of its young lawyers when it promoted eight associates to the partnership recently but the equity is still tightly held and is believed to be a factor in the departures.

The exit of the competition group comes hard on the heels of Rambaud’s corporate litigator Stephane Benouville, who left the firm to join Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer last month.

Rambaud Martel were not available for comment.