Salans raids Beiten for Moscow push

Salans has boosted its Moscow office by 10 lawyers, taking a two-partner team from German independent firm Beiten Burkhardt.

The firm has brought in real estate partners Florian Schneider and Roman Kozlov along with a team of eight associates. Salans now has more than 40 lawyers in its Russian real estate practice, as the Central and Eastern European legal markets experience a boom.

Salans co-head of global real estate Eric Rosedale said: "Real estate's been white-hot. We already had capacity problems in Russia and we're barely keeping up with the workflow.

"That's true for any of the top law firms in Russia today. If you ring someone and ask them if they can cope with more work, they'll say no."

Rosedale said Salans was able to take such a large group because the two partners and their associates were a close-knit team.

Schneider and Kozlov will service Salans' real estate client roster in Russia, which includes household names Morgan Stanley and General Electric, along with large Russian conglomerates.

The Moscow legal market has witnessed a series of high-profile moves as the workload increases. Clifford Chance, for example, has prised three senior lawyers from CMS Cameron McKenna in Moscow, including office head David Griston, in the latter half of this year.

Beiten, meanwhile, has focused its efforts on the growing opportunities in Ukraine, taking on eight lawyers from the likes of PricewaterhouseCoopers and BC Toms & Co earlier in the year.