More than five years after vowing to rebuild its depleted Frankfurt operation, Dechert announced Tuesday that it has opened an office in the German city that will focus on financial services, according to sibling publication The Legal Intelligencer. As part of the Frankfurt foray, Dechert has hired BENEDIKT WEISER, most recently a partner and head of Mayer Brown’s German private investment funds group. Weiser, who is to start at Dechert in February, joins Munich-based partner ADAM PÜTZ, who will serve as Frankfurt office’s managing partner, and CARSTEN FISCHER, a former partner and leader of the regulatory team at WTS Group who recently jumped to Dechert.
Fischer concentrates his practice in the areas of asset management, banking regulation, and insurance law, while Weiser focuses on advising both investors and fund sponsors on the structuring and formation of investment funds, including private equity, real estate, infrastructure, mezzanine, and hedge funds.
Dechert first opened a Frankfurt outpost in 2002, but has lost all its lawyers there by 2005. According to a 2006 story in U.K. publication Legal Week, the firm vowed to rebuild the office with an emphasis on Islamic finance. By March 2009, however, onetime Frankfurt managing partner and Islamic finance rainmaker Andreas Junius had left for German firm P&P Poellath in March 2009. “Germany has always been an important part of our strategy to serve our clients’ global needs,” Dechert CEO Daniel O’Donnell said in reference to the new office opening. He added that he expects the firm to continue building up its European presence by recruiting more financial services and corporate attorneys.
In other Churn news . . .
Baker & Hostetler has lured two intellectual property partners from Morrison & Foerster, as both BARRY BRETSCHNEIDER and JOHN CORRADO join Baker’s Washington, D.C., office. Bretschneider is a patent infringement litigator who represents domestic and foreign technological and pharmaceutical companies. Corrado, who has a broad-based intellectual property and commercial litigation practice, was formerly the head of Morrison & Foerster’s Washington and Northern Virginia litigation practice group.
