Sidley Austin has hired Debevoise & Plimpton’s finance chair in New York to support its efforts to grow its global finance and private equity offering.
Jeffrey Ross has joined Sidley’s global finance practice after more than 20 years at Debevoise, where he helped grow the firm’s finance team. He focuses on acquisition and leveraged finance transactions, particularly structuring and negotiating large-scale acquisition financings, including leveraged buyouts, mergers and reverse Morris trust transactions.
“Jeff has developed deep relationships with premier private equity sponsors and corporate borrowers, including some of our existing corporate clients, and will advance our goal of expanding our global finance and private equity capabilities,” said Brian Fahrney, Sidley’s executive committee chair. “As a Band 1-ranked Chambers Global lawyer, his reputation for handling complex, high-value transactions that require coordination across financing and M&A workstreams will bring great value to our team and our clients.”
Ross has worked on major deals, including Clayton Dubilier & Rice’s $7bn acquisition of Focus Financial Partners, the $5.9bn acquisition of King Digital by Activision Blizzard and Elliott’s $16.5bn acquisition of Citrix. He was also part of the Debevoise team that represented Warner Bros. Discovery on its failed sale to Netflix; the firm is now advising the company on its pending sale to Paramount Skydance.
In the last two years, Sidley has added more than a dozen partners to its global finance practice, which now numbers more than 200 lawyers. Alongside Ross, in New York, the firm has recruited partner Leah Edelboim, who joined earlier this year from Cadwalader Wicksersham & Taft at the helm of a 10-lawyer fund finance group. Last year, it also picked up debt finance partner Ji Hye You from Proskauer Rose and CLO specialist Chris Jackson from A&O Shearman.
Nancy Chung, managing partner of Sidley’s New York office, added Ross was “particularly well-positioned” to support the clients of the firm’s recently-added New York M&A and PE partners, including Dave Perkins, who joined last year having been co-head of private equity at Cravath Swaine & Moore.
Cravath, like Debevoise, used to be immune to partner departures but has seen rainmakers exit in recent years amid intense competition for talent among leading law firms.
Debevoise has seen at least three partners exit so far this year; finance partner Michael McGuigan left for Ropes & Gray in January, shortly before John Neukom, who had been co-chair of Debevoise’s technology practice, exited for Davis Polk & Wardwell. The move reunited him with Michael Diz, who co-led Debevoise’s M&A group before joining Davis Polk last March.
Bloomberg Law reported that Debevoise introduced a non-equity partner tier a few months after Diz’s move, having been one of the last Big Law firms with a pure equity partnership.
A firm spokesperson said of Ross’s move: “We have appreciated Jeff’s contributions to the firm and wish him well.”
Debevoise announced this week it had created a new leadership structure within its finance group, naming co-chairs of three areas within the practice: leveraged and corporate, fund, and structured.
Ryan Rafferty and Scott Selinger have been appointed co-chairs of the firm’s leveraged and corporate finance practice, while Thomas Smith and Ramya Tiller have been appointed co-chairs of the fund finance practice and Pierre Maugüé has been appointed chair of the structured finance practice.
Presiding partner Peter Furci said the appointments were in response to client demand for “distinct capabilities and global coverage” across the three specialities.
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