Greenberg Traurig has hired a four-strong senior Israeli-focused corporate team from McDermott Will & Emery to bolster its corporate practice in New York and Tel Aviv.

The quartet all join as shareholders, with Mark Selinger and Eyal Peled based in New York and Gary Emmanuel and David Huberman located in Tel Aviv. They are also joined by a team of associates. The team’s practice broadly focuses on corporate, M&A and capital markets matters and will help strengthen the firm’s link between Israeli business and its global clients. Greenberg Traurig has been in the Israeli market for the past two decades, formally opening a Tel Aviv office in 2012.

Joey Shabot, the firm’s Tel Aviv office managing partner, said: “We are thrilled to add a team of attorneys that has, for the past several years, held the number one spot in volume of capital markets transactions for Israeli companies and who bring extensive expertise in numerous industries at the forefront of the Israeli innovation ecosystem.”

Selinger joins after 23 years at McDermott, though he has been active in the Israeli market since 1994. His practice focuses on public and private tech and life sciences deals, including cross-border M&A and take privates involving Nasdaq-listed Israeli companies. He also has experience advising family offices and family office-backed investment funds.

Peled, meantime, joins after just under five years as a partner at McDermott, having joined from Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, where he was an associate in New York and London. Prior to that he spent a year as a law clerk at Israeli firm Goldfarb Seligman in Tel Aviv.

Captial markets lawyer Emmanuel is returning to Tel Aviv after almost 20 years in US, roughly seven of them as a partner at McDermott and the rest of the time across a number of New York firms including Sichenzia Ross Ference Kesner, Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt and Beigelman Feiner & Feldman. He started his career at Shiboleth Yisraeli Roberts Zisman & Co in Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv-based Huberman joins after just over a year at McDermott’s Israeli office, having previously spent almost a year-and-a-half at Sullivan & Worcester and more than six years at Zsyman Aharoni Gayer & Co before that.

Robert Grossman, co-founder and head of the firm’s Israel practice, said: “The addition of this group to Greenberg Traurig’s global Israel practice and Tel Aviv office is a testament to the firm’s continuing commitment to Israel.”

At the end of August, AmLaw 200 firm Honigman hired five lawyers to launch an Israeli subsidiary – Honigman Law Israel – for US lawyers seeking to practise US law from Israel. CMS also opened a Tel Aviv office in September 2021.