Sullivan & Cromwell has recruited Shearman & Sterling M&A partner Jeremy Kutner for its City ranks, marking the elite US firm's first London lateral hire in five years.

Kutner, the head of Shearman's technology, media and telecoms (TMT) industry group, has advised on deals involving major media companies including Fairfax, Liberty Global, Vivendi and Virgin Media.

Last year he was part of a team which acted for Liberty on the sale of its €19bn operations in Germany, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic to Vodafone, while he also worked on the company's multibillion-pound acquisition of Cable & Wireless.

Before making partner at Shearman in January 2012, Kutner was an associate at Linklaters.

It is understood that Sullivan has for some time been looking to recruit a senior corporate partner as part of its succession planning for European M&A head Tim Emmerson. One City partner told Legal Week that Sullivan "has been looking for several years for someone" to come in as a potential successor to corporate heavyweight Emmerson, described as "the go-to person for Goldman Sachs for English law work", who has been at the firm since 2007.

Prior to the hire of Kutner, Sullivan's last London lateral was restructuring partner Chris Howard, who joined from Linklaters in 2013.

Shearman recently rehired high yield partner Ward McKimm back into its City ranks from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, seven years after he left the US firm in 2011.