Well, it’s now official. Barely a year after international firms were falling over themselves to shed leveraged finance partners – most prominently with Allen & Overy’s (A&O) move to drastically downsize its City LBO team – leading law firms are now executing an abrupt U-turn and are aggressively hunting for acquisition finance talent.
Any doubt over the current appetite for such lawyers will have been dispelled by Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy’s five-partner haul from Latham & Watkins, one of biggest team hires at this level to ever hit Wall Street law.
