Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM In an effort to build out its global finance team, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman has added a pair of leveraged finance partners, Michael Michetti and Joel Simon, from Schulte Roth & Zabel in New York. “The firm has a great brand and reputation in the finance and capital markets community, and we very much look forward to teaming up with our new colleagues to continue building that practice,” Michetti said in a statement. The duo has collaborated on matters for more than three decades, since beginning their careers as associates at Cahill Gordon & Reindel in the 1980s. Simon works with clients on complex transactions including high-yield debt, acquisitions and dispositions, senior bank and mezzanine debt financings. Simon left Cahill in 1994 for Dorsey & Whitney before joining Paul Hastings a year later. Michetti spent more than 22 years at Cahill before joining Simon at Paul Hastings in 2011 . There, along with former Paul Hastings partner (and now Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel leveraged finance chair) Richard Farley, Michetti founded Paul Hastings' leveraged and acquisition finance practice. In 2016, both Michetti and Simon left Paul Hastings, joining Schulte Roth as partners in its finance group. “[Michetti] and [Simon] are talented, knowledgeable and extremely well-connected, and they have a strong track record of building and leading large, successful teams,” Pillsbury chair David Dekker said in a statement. “Their addition represents a significant step as we build a market-leading bank and leveraged finance practice that meets the growing demands of our clients,” Dekker added. In May, Pillsbury added a 13-lawyer state and local tax (SALT) team from Eversheds Sutherland in California and New York. The firm also added Vinson & Elkins intellectual property litigators Christopher Kao and David Tsai in San Francisco to lead a new Taiwan office.