Milbank boosts London lev-fin practice with Mayer Brown hire

Neil Caddy, who advises financial institutions on acquisition financings and restructurings, joined Mayer Brown as a partner from Allen & Overy (A&O), where he was an associate, in February 2010 (1 February 2010).

Caddy was one of a number of partners who joined Mayer Brown’s leveraged finance practice around that time to have since left. In 2009 Mayer Brown hired Lee Cullinane from Clifford Chance and Jacqueline Evans from A&O to lead its push into leveraged finance. Mayer Brown then subsequently hired Nicola Marley from Linklaters, Graham Wedlake from Taylor Wessing, John Clark from Clifford Chance and Caddy.

Cullinane and Evans left Mayer Brown for White & Case in December 2010 (15 December 2010), while Marley left for Minter Ellison in May this year (2 May 2012). Wedlake and Clark remain at Mayer Brown.

In a statement, Milbank’s London leveraged finance head Suhrud Mehta said: “Neil’s exactly the kind of lawyer we need as we expand our offering around key clients in London. He has the right mix of technical and commercial abilities, honed on many of the major European leveraged deals. Neil also has significant restructuring expertise – valuable not only to our leveraged finance practice but also to financial restructuring.”

Caddy is not the first high-profile hire that Milbank has made this year. In February The Lawyer reported that the firm had taken Linklaters corporate partner Mark Stamp (29 February 2012) and then in June that it had hired veteran competition partner Nicholas Spearing from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (6 June 2012).