McGuireWoods hires Milbank partner to push NY expansion

Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy has lost a restructuring partner to McGuireWoods' burgeoning New York office, little more than a year after he joined the firm from Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.
James Ricciardi, known for his recent involvement in acting for Enron Corp's creditors' committee while at Milbank, originally joined the firm in April last year. However, this June he made the leap to Virginia's McGuireWoods.
Before Milbank, Ricciardi had spent 12 years at Gibson Dunn, six of which as a partner.
Ricciardi's recruitment is a coup for McGuireWoods, which merged with Chicago's Ross & Hardies on 1 July, since the firm is hoping to expand its restructuring capability in New York.
The merger means that McGuireWoods' small New York office, which opened in January 2000, automatically gains 30 lawyers from Ross & Hardies. McGuireWoods' managing partner William Strickland said that Ricciardi will be responsible for building the firm's New York restructuring capability, as the majority of the firm's practice is based outside the City, predominantly in Pittsburgh.
In the past four to five years, McGuireWoods has been quietly expanding across the US through a mixture of merger and organic growth, resulting in the firm opening offices in Charlotte, Pittsburgh and Atlanta, as well as New York.
Strickland said that the firm would continue to widen and had no set limit in terms of the future size of the practice.
McGuireWoods concentrates on its core areas of products liability, corporate securities and labour and employment. For 2002, the firm reported a 9.5 per cent increase in overall revenues to $241m (£150m).
Milbank declined to comment on the reasons behind Ricciardi's departure, while Ricciardi was unavailable for comment.