Stuart Harray Joins Milbank in London
Milbank Expands Resident Corporate Practice into Frankfurt
Milbank Indicates Ambitious Plans for Further Growth and Promotions in London and Germany
LONDON, FRANKFURT & MUNICH, February 21, 2007 – The international law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP announced today several developments in its European corporate practice which demonstrate its continued ambition, strength and success.
Election of Stuart Harray
Stuart Harray has been elected as a Partner, resident in London, where he will take a leading role in Milbank’s UK Corporate Practice. Stuart was a partner at Allen & Overy in London from 1998 – 2005, and in 2004 – 2005 was a Managing Partner of its corporate department. During 2006, Stuart was a partner at Russell McVeagh in New Zealand.
Stuart is a corporate lawyer with broad and deep experience in a wide variety of M&A work, coupled with proven leadership and practice development abilities. Previously, his work has focused principally on transactions in the energy and utilities sector, and has taken a leading role in developing corporate practices in this area, including by fostering collaboration between a strong corporate practice and a strong project finance practice. One of the attractions of Stuart to Milbank, and Milbank to Stuart, is Milbank’s long standing and widely recognized global strengths in the energy, infrastructure and utilities sectors, which is especially evident in Milbank’s London office.
Stuart stated “ For me it is a tremendously exciting opportunity to join an elite organization and be part of its on-going international development.”
In addition to general M&A work, it is expected that Stuart will actively participate in, and draw upon, Milbank’s strong European private equity practice, which Milbank intends to continue to grow and strengthen through a combination of further lateral partners and internal promotions. “The combination of my background, Milbank’s strength in infrastructure financing, and Milbank’s prominent private equity practice, should very naturally point to us as a firm of choice in Europe for infrastructure private equity investors,” Stuart explained.
Mel Immergut, Chairman of Milbank, said “We are delighted that Stuart has decided to re-enter London by joining Milbank. Our corporate practice delivers legal services in our areas of focus at the highest levels of quality and sophistication, and with seamless teamwork. We are fortunate that Stuart saw what we saw – that he is a natural and terrific addition to what we have going.”
Expansion of Frankfurt Practice
Additionally, Milbank has announced the expansion of its corporate practice into Frankfurt. To date, Milbank’s Frankfurt office has been exclusively focused on banking and finance law advice while corporate/M&A and tax advice were provided out of the Munich office. Effective March 1, 2007, corporate partner Norbert Rieger will spend half of his time in the Frankfurt office and senior associate Peter Memminger will fully transfer from Munich to Frankfurt. Additionally, corporate associates will be recruited for the Frankfurt office. Norbert Rieger comments: “Our corporate practice has significantly expanded and this move will provide improved service to our corporate and private equity clients in the Frankfurt area and enable us to work even closer with our outstanding banking and finance practice.”
Further European Growth Planned
Phillip Fletcher, who manages Milbank’s European offices, said that “the addition of Stuart Harray and the establishment of a Frankfurt corporate practice are just the latest of a set of important developments, and more would follow in our core practices”.
Milbank’s teams in London and Germany have core competency in UK, German and US corporate, tax and acquisition finance, and these teams largely function as a single integrated unit in the private equity and LBO finance area. Milbank is actively pursuing lateral hiring, including at the partner level, for its London private equity team. “Private equity is a major component of our global business. Our clients want us to have more, and we want our clients to come to us for more, so we want to and need to keep growing and building,” Mel Immergut stated.
Milbank has a team of over 80 lawyers among its offices in London, Munich and Frankfurt, including 20 partners. Last fall it promoted two of its UK associates, Suhrud Mehta in the acquisition finance area and Sean Keaton in the corporate/technologies transactions area, to partner, and in the prior year promoted to partner one of its German associates, Ulrike Friese-Dormann in the corporate/public M&A area, and one of its UK associates, James Warbey in the structured finance area. Milbank stated that, although it is actively pursuing lateral partners in London and in Germany, it expects that most of its growth at the partner level in Europe will come from internal promotions.
About Milbank
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP is a preeminent global law firm that for more than 140 years has provided innovative legal solutions in many of the world’s largest, most complex, “first-ever” corporate transactions and litigation. Our transactional expertise includes capital markets, corporate finance and transactions, project finance, acquisition finance, and other major fields of law practice. Milbank litigation teams resolve disputes involving mergers and acquisitions, proxy battles, financings and securities offerings, intellectual property, white collar crime, and corporate restructurings, among others. Our clients range from prominent multinational financial, industrial and commercial enterprises to governments, institutions and individuals. The Firm is headquartered in New York with offices in Beijing, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Singapore, Tokyo, and Washington, DC.