Allen & Overy is pleased to announce a major strategic addition to its global finance practice that will significantly expand its U.S. presence, with the hiring of a team of five New York leveraged finance partners. The team is led by senior leveraged finance partner Scott M. Zemser and includes dual qualified partner Alan Rockwell and partners Rajani Gupta, Judah Frogel and Todd Koretzky. Scott, Alan and Judah are joining from White & Case, Rajani is joining from Proskauer Rose and Todd is joining from Milbank, Tweed, Hadley&McCloy.

The team’s leading U.S. domestic and international finance practice represents banks and other financial institutions as lead arrangers, underwriters and participants across all types of financings and also advises clients on complex debt restructurings and workouts. The team’s key clients include major industry players (and existing institutional clients of the firm) such as Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.

The addition of the new U.S. partners to A&O’s existing New York banking practice and global platform of more than 250 finance partners across the U.S., EMEA and Asia Pacific will create an unmatched international banking and leveraged finance practice. The new partners have extensive U.S. domestic, as well as cross-border and international, banking and leveraged finance experience and will considerably strengthen the firm’s ability to serve clients seamlessly across all major financial markets and provide a robust “one-stop shop” for their U.S. law and English law leveraged finance transactions and other banking needs.

Philip Bowden, A&O’s global co-head of Banking commented: “The U.S. and European leveraged finance markets have changed significantly over the past few years. They are no longer completely independent markets with separate pools of liquidity, but are increasingly used to finance both domestic transactions and deals outside of their home market. The addition of this highly experienced team of U.S. lawyers, led by Scott Zemser who has over 25 years of U.S. and international leveraged finance experience, greatly enhances our ability to support clients globally regardless of the type of law or place of origin of their financing transactions.”

Wim De Jonghe, A&O’s senior partner added: “There are very few top-tier U.S. or global firms that can field a combined U.S. and European leveraged finance practice the way we can now. The addition of these high caliber partners in New York not only strengthens our global finance practice, but demonstrates our strategic commitment to significantly grow our U.S. practice. We are delighted to welcome Scott, Alan, Rajani, Judah and Todd to A&O.”

New A&O partner and co-head of global leveraged finance, Scott Zemser, commented: “We have joined Allen &Overy because it’s one of the global elite law firms and provides our team with an incredible global platform to serve our clients in multiple practice areas. We’re excited to expand A&O’s U.S. finance practice and at the same time strengthen A&O’s market leading practice in the European and Asian leveraged finance markets.”