Ropes & Gray promotes London duo in global promo round

The new partners in the London office are Michael Kazakevich in global finance and Daniel Martin in bankruptcy and business restructuring. Both joined the firm in 2010, Kazakevich from the New York office of Cahill Gordon & Reindel and Martin from the London office of Weil Gotshal & Manges.

Their promotions, which bring the number of partners in the City to 18, illustrates where the firm sees “prime areas of growth” for its London office, according to a firm spokesperson. Kazakevich focuses on high yield and leveraged finance transactions, while Martin advises debtors, creditors, insolvency practitioners and private equity sponsors on all aspects of insolvencies and restructurings.

Ropes & Gray’s promotion round also saw a further seven lawyers promoted to the partnership across the firm’s US offices. Alex Zeltser and Jessica Taylor O’Mary were promoted in New York, Rocky Tsai in San Francisco, Kim Nemirow in Washington DC and Michael Lampert and Cameron Casey in Boston. Four counsel were also made up, including Turner Buford, Christopher Parsons and Louis Somma in New York and Paul Schoenhard in Washington DC.

The promotions follow a number of hires to the firm’s London office in recent years, including former Clifford Chance partner Iain Morpeth in January (4 January 2012) and former White & Case partner Matthew Judd in February (13 February 2012). Last year also saw the hires of DLA Piper partners Kiran Sharma (28 February 2011) and European private equity head Will Rosen (4 April 2011) and M&A partner Peter Baldwin from Jones Day (9 March 2011). The firm also transferred private equity partner Bill Mone from Boston to London in June 2011.