Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld has hired its first partners in Chicago, where it plans to open an office according to sources with knowledge of the matter. 

The firm has hit Mayer Brown for a pair of partners who focus on real estate funds and infrastructure M&A. 

Wendy Dodson Gallegos and Jason Wagenmaker practised together for nearly two decades at Mayer Brown, where Dodson Gallegos co-led the global private funds and investment management practice and headed its real estate funds practice, and Wagenmaker co-led infrastructure M&A strategy. 

Abid Qureshi, Akin’s co-chair, said the duo were “exceptional lawyers at the top of the market”.

“Their practices align with our real estate funds practice and global transactional platform serving the largest and most respected alternative asset managers around the world,” he added.

Gallegos represents real estate private equity firms and sector-specific operators and allocators in forming open-end and closed-end private equity funds, Akin said. She also advises investment managers on structuring and negotiating club deals and separate accounts. 

Meanwhile Wagenmaker advises investors and companies in complex M&A transactions across transportation, social infrastructure, digital infrastructure, energy, real estate, steel, chemicals and technology. At Mayer Brown he recently led teams that advised Igneo Infrastructure Partners in the acquisition of data centre services provider US Signal Company and Walton Street Capital on the sale of Walton Street Mexico, a real estate asset management platform, to Ares Management. 

The duo’s move follows an 11-lawyer capital markets and M&A team exiting Mayer Brown’s Chicago office last August to join Willkie Farr & Gallagher, as the latter continued to rapidly build the office it opened there in 2020. Mayer Brown, which is headquartered in Chicago, has a sizeable team in the city of around 380 lawyers. 

For its part 900-lawyer Akin currently has 17 offices globally, including the Boston office it opened in early 2023 after hiring a pair of tax partners from local firm Choate Hall & Stewart. The office, which focuses on transactional matters for alternative investment managers, has since grown to 16 lawyers including seven partners. 

In March the firm also announced plans to open an office in Riyadh, hiring project finance partner Alexander Malahias from White & Case to co-lead the launch. 

Going the other way the firm shuttered its Beijing base – its only location in mainland China – last year amid a broader trend of international firms stepping away from China as political tensions and regulatory uncertainty cloud their business outlooks.