Moves: 16 July 2012

Move of the week

Regulatory, disciplinary and white collar cnrime partner James Carlton is joining from Russell Jones & Walker’s business crime and regulatory investigations group and investment funds partner Richard Honeybourne joins from Addleshaw Goddard.

The move marks a second heavyweight investment by the firm into its City regulatory practice, following the appointment of Peter Wright from the FSA in September last year.

UK

London

Ashurst has appointed Martin Brown as a partner in its banking group. He joins from CMS Cameron McKenna, where he was a partner in its banking team, specialising in corporate restructuring and insolvency.

Katten Muchin Rosenman real estate attorney Peter Sugden has been unveiled as the firm’s new managing partner. He previously served as head of real estate in London for Mayer Brown. The firm has also made a triple hire to its real estate team, with special counsel Stephen John and partner Ranjeev Kumar from the London office of Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson and partner Joe Payne from Field Fisher Waterhouse.

Proskauer Rose has boosted its London offering with the hire of a capital markets quartet including Kaye Scholer City partner Katherine Mulhern. The US firm has also taken on Citigroup in-house lawyer and former Baker & McKenzie partner Peter Castellon, Cravath Swaine & Moore senior attorney Roberto Bruno and Latham & Watkins New York associate Max Kirchner. Kirchner joins as a senior counsel in London, with the remaining three becoming partners.

King & Spalding is set to launch a London real estate practice on the back of the collapse of Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson’s City team. Fried Frank’s London practice head Nigel Heilpern is set to join King & Spalding as a partner to launch its real estate practice in the City. No date has been given for real estate finance specialist Heilpern’s arrival.

Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) has boosted its corporate practice in London with a funds specialist from Nabarro. Justin Cornelius, who made partner at Nabarro in 2003, will join BLP as a partner in the London corporate practice. No start date has been confirmed.

King & Spalding has boosted its London corporate group with the hire of Mayer Brown corporate partner William Charnley. No date has been given for Charnley joining King & Spalding, but he will leave Mayer Brown in the next two weeks.

Midlands

Shakespeares has appointed Simon Mennell as HR director across the firm’s seven offices. He was formally a HR director with CPA Global in Jersey.

Clarke Willmott has appointed Catherine Elliott as a partner in the private capital team in its Birmingham office. She joins from Hadens, where she was managing partner.

Scotland

Gordon Wyllie has joined Scottish private client solicitor Bird Semple from Biggart Baillie. He joins as partner in the asset protection department, based in Glasgow. He had been a private client, charity law and administration partner at Biggart Baillie.

South

Essex law firm Birkett Long has made five promotions to its senior team. Wendy Kelly, Helen Pettican, Emma Waters and Emma Wraight have become associates while Claire Read has been promoted to equity partner.

Commercial lawyer Ricky Sidhu has joined regional law firm Morgan Cole in Oxford as an associate. He has moved from Uxbridge-based Turbervilles, where he was an associate.

Europe

Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners has announced a round of promotions at its Moscow office. Denis Arkhipov (litigation) and Andrey Porfiriev (property and bankruptcy) will become partners and Victoria Burkovskaya (white collar crime), Natalia Kuznetsova (crime) and Igor Serebryakov (litigation) will become counsel.

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati has hired Christopher Kuner as a senior counsel at the firm. He specialises in European Union privacy and data protection regulation and was formerly a partner at Hunton & Williams. He will be based in the firm’s Brussels office.

SJ Berwin has hired partners for its Madrid and Frankfurt offices. Former Watson Farley & Williams managing partner Joaquin Sales will be a partner in the banking and finance law practice in Madrid. Frances Bellen has moved to the firm’s Frankfurt office as a litigation partner from Haarmann, where he was one of the founding partners. SJ Berwin has also retained Professor Geoffrey Wood as economic adviser.

Asia-Pacific

Banking partner Nuncio D’Angelo has joined Norton Rose Australia as a partner in Sydney to lead its banking and finance team. He joins from King & Wood Mallesons where he was a banking partner.

General Electric’s (GE) former Asia Pacific general counsel Steve Maloy has taken a senior advisory role at Beijing-headquartered Chinese law firm JT&N to help the firm grow its international practice. Maloy worked at GE for 35 years, 29 of them in Asia. Over the past three decades, he helped build up GE’s Asia Pacific in-house department from a single lawyer to almost 200 members. He retired from this role recently and was succeeded by Geoffrey Culbert, formerly the Asia-Pacific general counsel for GE Capital.

Offshore

Carey Olsen has made a number of senior promotions across the group. Employment lawyer Huw Thomas has been promoted to counsel in the Jersey office. Rachel Richardson has been made a senior associate in Guernsey. Oliver Quarmby, previously an associate in Guernsey’s corporate and finance group, is joining the London office as a senior associate. In the Guernsey property team, John Le Tissier has been promoted to senior associate.

In-house

Emma Vernon has been made the head of legal and company secretariat at Kleinwort Benson. She joined as legal counsel from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in 2010 and has been promoted internally to the position.

National Grid general counsel and company secretary Helen Mahy has called time on her 11-year career with the energy company. She will leave the business in January 2013 and will be replaced by Alison Kay, who is commercial director of the company’s UK transmission business, having been UK general counsel three years ago.

Linklaters capital markets partner Brigid Rentoul has left the firm to join Winton Capital Management as head of legal, amid a restructuring of the West End hedge fund manager’s in-house team. Rentoul will work alongside incumbent legal chief Andrew Bastow.

Deutsche Bank’s long-standing chief legal officer Arne Wittig is leaving the bank’s Frankfurt office to take up the role of general counsel at German steel and industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp. Mathias Otto, Deutsche Bank’s deputy general counsel for Germany and Central & Eastern Europe, will serve as acting general counsel for the region.