DLA Piper” />Pinsent Masons has raided DLA Piper for four appointments to ramp up its global projects and UK project finance groups.
Partner and head of DLA Piper’s Birmingham project finance team Nicholas Iliff will run Pinsents’ UK project finance practice out of the Birmingham office from the New Year. He takes with him legal director Graeme Walton, who joins as a senior associate, and associate Andrew Holmes.
This is a major coup for Pinsents’ Birmingham office, given the major challenges of recruiting from what is a tight local employment market.
In Hong Kong DLA Piper head of Asian energy and infrastructure John Yeap will become a partner in Pinsents’ projects and international procurement team.
Yeap is a transactional projects lawyer and since 1995 has focused almost exclusively on Asia-Pacific infrastructure work. He recently advised Thai generation project Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Company on a $500m (£245.22m) service agreement with GE Energy.
The lateral hires are a loss for DLA Piper’s regional operations, which have seen the departure of several partners in recent months (www.the lawyer.com, 16 November).
Neither Iliff nor Yeap were available for comment.
