Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson rainmaker Stephen Fraidin has quit the firm’s New York office to join Chicago’s Kirkland & Ellis as it emerges that Ashurst Morris Crisp is still attempting to set its voting threshold before merging.

The 63-year-old corporate star had been a partner at the firm since 1971 and has advised on some of the biggest corporate deals in US history, such as the leveraged buy-out of RJR Nabisco in 1988.