Moves roundup: 2 March 2009
Move of the week
DLA Piper has hired Costanza Russo as a London partner from
Paul Hastings, where she was a senior associate. Russo won the Assistant Solicitor of the Year gong at The Lawyer Awards 2008. She specialises in project finance and focuses on infrastructure projects in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as finance work with a focus on the Italian market.
UK
LONDON
• Nic Hart has joined West End firm Davenport Lyons as an employment partner. He joins from Clarke Willmott, where he was a partner.
• Pinsent Masons has hired Allen & Overy Hungary partner Marcell Nemeth to head its European banking practice in London.
• German insolvency specialist Schultze & Braun has hired Frank Tschentscher as a senior director for its London office. He was previously a partner at Geldards.
SOUTH
• Manches has appointed property litigation associate Sarah Moreton to its Oxford office. She was previously at Bircham Dyson Bell in London.
• Charlie Barnes has qualified as an employment assistant at Coffin Mew in Portsmouth after completing his training contract with the firm.
SOUTH WEST
• Alison Sadler has joined Plymouth-based firm Wolferstans as an associate and team leader in the family law department’s children team. She joins from Ashfords, where she was an associate.
MIDLANDS NORTH
• Michael Blamire-Brown has joined HBJ Gateley Wareing as a consultant in its local government practice from Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, where he was a local government solicitor and monitoring officer.
• Loughborough firm Edward Hands & Lewis has taken on assistant Paul Stubbs in its litigation team and assistant Jason Waghorne in its commercial practice. Stubbs joined from Astle Paterson, while Waghorne trained at the firm.
• Birmingham’s Shakespeare Putsman has hired IP partner Mauro Paiano from Cobbetts and insurance assistant Michelle Iles from Beachcroft.
• Pinsent Masons construction partner Dean Larder has joined Dickinson Dees in York.
• Watson Burton partner Duncan Reid has joined Newcastle’s Ward Hadaway as a partner and head of the private equity team.
• Aisha Anwar has joined DLA Piper Glasgow’s litigation and regulatory practice as a partner from Maclay Murray & Spens, where she was
an associate.
EUROPE
• DLA Piper has hired Paolo Zamberletti as a partner in its Italian corporate practice from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Milan office. The firm has also hired seven lawyers into its Spanish litigation and regulation group. Formerly at Lexland Abogados’s Madrid office, Miguel Bermúdez de Castro and Álvaro Lobato join as partners, while Raffaele Giannattassio, Irene Muñoz, Javier Vicente and David Hernández will be joining as associates. Antoni Frigola will join as counsel, having formerly been a judge at the Madrid Commercial Court.
• Covington & Burling in Brussels has hired Miranda Cole as special counsel in the EU competition practice. She joins from Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.
• Allen & Overy has relocated London M&A partner Tim Shilling to its Moscow office.
US
• Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom has hired Judith Kaye as of counsel in its litigation department. She was previously a chief judge at the New York Court of Appeals.
• Bankruptcy partner Sandra Mayerson has joined the New York office of Squire Sanders from Holland & Knight, where she was a partner.
• Employment partner Reed Russell has returned to Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. He was appointed head of the office of legal counsel
at the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by George W Bush in 2007.
• King & Spalding has hired three IP partners from Baker Botts. In Austin the firm has taken on Bruce Slayden, who was previously co-chair of Baker Botts’ international patent practice group and head of its IP department in Austin, and William Beard, who was a partner at the firm. Andy Grubert, who was also a partner at Baker Botts, joins the firm’s London office.
• Covington & Burling has rehired partner Thomas Barnett, who was most recently assistant attorney general in the US Justice Department’s antitrust division. He will head the firm’s global antitrust and competition law practice.
IN-HOUSE
• Welsh television channel S4C has hired Geldards corporate partner Elin Morris as director of corporate and commercial policy.
VOLUME
• Optima Legal has hired Kevin Moses as an associate to head its contested debt team. He was formerly head of LDJ Solicitors’ dispute resolution team. Rachel Hutton from DLA Piper’s banking and finance litigation team has joined Optima as an associate to head its professional negligence team.
INDIA
• Indian legal process outsourcing company Legal Circle has appointed Edward Turner as the director of its US operations. Before retirement and joining Legal Circle, Turner was a senior partner in Shearman & Sterling’s Asia practice. The company has also appointed US attorney Kenneth Gunning as its vice-president of operations. He was formerly an associate at Kirkland & Ellis.
GOVERNMENT
• Zahida Manzoor CBE has been reappointed as Legal Services Ombudsman and Legal Services Complaints Commissioner for England and Wales.
