So who is the winner? Kirkland & Ellis for hiring a respected three-partner funds team from SJ Berwin – or SJs’ transactional team for seeing the back of those grumpy folk on the other side of the office?
Kirkland will be the one more likely to pop open the champagne. It is not every day that a smallish London outpost of a US firm hires three top partners from the leading practice of any particular sector. The move completes Kirkland’s push to hire in an all-round private equity offering too, with the office splashing the cash to hire Linklaters private equity duo Raymond McKeeve and Graham White and Allen & Overy acquisition finance partner Stephen Gillespe last year. Presumably the Chicago firm is confident it can secure a chunk of SJ Berwin’s clients, given it has hardly yet established itself as a private equity powerhouse in the UK.
