Vinson & Elkins has opened an office in Brussels with an antitrust partner hired from Hogan Lovells.
May Lyn Yuen has joined after 12 years at her former firm to lead the new office – Vinson & Elkins’ first in Continental Europe. She advises on multi-jurisdictional mergers and large-scale cartel and antitrust cases, as well as counselling clients dealing with the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation.
Vinson & Elkins’ chair, Keith Fullenweider, said the Brussels move reflected the firm’s “commitment to both our cross-border investigations and transactional practices”.
Hill Wellford, co-head of the firm’s antitrust group, added that Yuen’s experience would boost its ability to counsel clients facing complex competition issues.
“Brussels is a natural next step in the growth of our international practice", Wellford said. "We're seeing an increasing number of major cross‑border deals for which a smooth EU regulatory review can be critical for substance and especially for timing.”
Yuen is qualified in England and Wales and the EU and has spent more than a decade in Brussels, having earlier been based in London.
She has acted for IBM in a number of deals, including its $4.6bn acquisition of Apptio in 2023 and $34bn acquisition of Red Hat in 2019. She also counselled Google in an investigation of its privacy sandbox by the CMA and BASF on the global merger control aspects of the combination of its paper and water chemicals business with Solenis.
At Vinson & Elkins, Yuen is expected to build the firm’s European presence in collaboration with its well-established London office and develop a transatlantic antitrust platform.
Her arrival follows the firm adding a string of partners in the US over the past few years as it moved to build a strong antitrust team under the leadership of Craig Seebald, a former co-chair of the firm’s litigation group.
Between late 2022 and mid-2023, the firm added a quartet of antitrust litigators across Washington DC and San Francisco – the most active antitrust litigation venue in the US – from Mayer Brown and Sheppard Mullin. Last year, antitrust litigator Nicole Castle joined in New York from McDermott Will & Emery.
The antitrust practice now houses 25 partners aside from Yuen, all of whom are in the US except London-based Louise Woods, co-head of international disputes for Europe. The practice has developed a solid reputation across litigation, government cartel investigations and transactional work, particularly for energy and tech sector clients.
Vinson & Elkins is the latest in a cluster of Big Law firms setting up shop in Brussels, targeting antitrust work. Earlier this month, Paul Hastings relaunched in the city with the hire of competition lawyer Salomé Cisnal de Ugarte from King & Spalding, while over the past four years, Paul Weiss, Davis Polk and Weil have all opened Brussels offices. Simpson Thacher and Kirkland & Ellis both opened there in 2021 and Reed Smith set up shop in 2020.
A Hogan Lovells spokesperson commented: “We would like to thank May Lyn for her contributions to the firm and wish her well.”
Last September, Hogan Lovells boosted its Brussels bench with the hire of a three-lawyer trade team from US firm Steptoe led by partner Renato Antonini, who had been head of Steptoe’s EU trade practice.
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