Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C) has hired a senior finance lawyer from A&O Shearman as it continues its closely-watched London expansion.
Patrick Clancy, a former longtime partner at legacy Shearman & Sterling, has joined S&C as counsel in a move the firm said would boost its derivatives and structured finance capabilities. At A&O Shearman, he was most recently a consultant at Peerpoint, the firm’s flexible legal resourcing arm.
Clancy’s move reunites him with Barney Reynolds, also a former longtime City Shearman partner who had been co-head of A&O Shearman’s financial services regulatory group before exiting for S&C last June in a high-profile move.
Reynolds described Clancy as “one of the leading experts in his field”, while Mitch Eitel, managing partner of S&C’s financial services group, said Clancy’s hire “strengthens our expertise in advising on the regulation, structuring and deployment of capital in the most complex transactions”.
Clancy brings more than 25 years’ experience advising financial institutions, funds and corporates on complex financial products including derivatives, as well as related financing structures such as collar financings, margin loans and total return swap facilities. His experience also includes bonds, securitisations and CLOs, and he regularly advises on trading and financing documentation.
Clancy continues a run of hires in S&C’s London office that began with Reynolds and picked up momentum last autumn with the addition of Kirkland & Ellis restructuring partner Kon Asimacopoulos and corporate partner Mike Francies, Weil’s former long-time London managing partner. That was followed by two more partner hires from Kirkland in December to boost its private equity, M&A and tax practices.
The firm’s London office, which is co-led by Asimacopoulos and John Horsfield-Bradbury, now boasts 88 lawyers according to the firm’s website – around 30 more than New York rival Davis Polk.
The London hires come at a more broadly expansive time for S&C, which, according to reports by Bloomberg Law and Law.com, has hired a junior Kirkland partner ahead of launching an office in Houston, its first in Texas.
In December, the firm also launched a new digital infrastructure practice group focused on areas including energy project development, GPU and system financing, hyperscale data centre development and leasing agreements that Bloomberg Law reported earlier this week was “already doing work in Texas”.
Meanwhile, Clancy’s departure from A&O Shearman comes hard on the heels of A&O Shearman’s loss earlier this week of real estate finance partners David Oppenheimer and David Varne and structured finance partner Lucy Oddy to Latham & Watkins.
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