Akin has opened an office in Chicago with a four-partner real estate funds and infrastructure M&A team it hired earlier this year from Mayer Brown.
The new office – the firm’s 18th globally – will be led by Wendy Gallegos, who co-led Mayer Brown’s global private funds and investment management practice and headed its real estate funds practice before joining Akin in May. The team is completed by Jason Wagenmaker, Mayer Brown’s former infrastructure M&A strategy co-head, M&A partner Joshua La Vigne and investment management partner Jessica Pan.
Akin said the move brought its investment management and corporate practices to a major market for private capital managers and an economic hub.
“Our opening in Chicago adds elite talent to our growing investment management and M&A teams,” said Abid Qureshi, Akin’s co-chair. “The group complements our transactional offering, and our clients will benefit from their skillsets.”
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.
Meanwhile, Wagenmaker advises investors and companies in complex M&A transactions across transportation, social infrastructure, digital infrastructure, energy, real estate, steel, chemicals and technology. La Vigne advises on M&A, divestitures, joint ventures and corporate governance matters, with a particular focus on infrastructure, and Pan acts for fund sponsors in the formation and management of private investment funds, including real estate and private equity funds.
The team’s move came shortly after Chicago-headquartered Mayer Brown lost a pair of energy and infrastructure partners – Paul Astolfi and Katy McNeil – to A&O Shearman in April for its debut in the city. Last August, an 11-lawyer capital markets and M&A team also exited Mayer Brown’s Chicago office to join Willkie Farr & Gallagher, as the latter continued to rapidly build the office it opened there in 2020.
Akin’s Chicago launch follows it setting up shop in Boston in early 2023 with a pair of tax partners recruited 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, Akin 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.
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