Hogan Lovells has hired former Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy partner Stuart Morrissy as a finance partner in the firm's international debt capital markets practice in New York.

Before joining Milbank in 2013, Morrissy spent 13 years at Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Morrissy advises clients on securities laws and on high-yield, leveraged finance and liability management transactions. A significant part of his practice involves lending and capital raising in a restructuring context. His client base runs the gamut from commercial and investment banks and financial institutions to export credit and multilateral agencies.

Morrissy said the breadth of his practice, and his restructuring expertise, in particular, is related to the course that the financial markets took in the past decade. At the time he started his legal career at Weil, he had a general high-yield focus, he said. But then came the global financial meltdown.

Stuart Morrissy

“Around 2008 to 2009, when everyone's capital markets practice changed and liquidity dried up, my focus at Weil turned to restructuring, and I ended up being the go-to person at the firm for the securities aspects of restructuring work,” Morrissy said.

The Lehman bankruptcy in 2008, and General Motors' Chapter 11 filing in 2009, offered further opportunities to apply restructuring expertise alongside such renowned names in insolvency law as Gary Holtzer, co-chair of Weil's business restructuring and finance department, Marcia Goldstein, a partner in the same practice, and Harvey Miller, who developed the practice, Morrissy said.

“I developed restructuring expertise at Weil, continued my work at Milbank, and expect to continue that area of focus at Hogan Lovells,” he said.

Morrissy's time at Milbank included two years in the firm's London office. In the course of that experience, Morrissy said he developed strong relations with multinationals in far-flung locales.

“Some of the underwriter work I did involved government agencies and sovereigns around the world, and so a very high percentage of my work is cross-border,” he said. “When there's a need, I can easily transition to doing London-based work for my new firm.”

Hogan Lovells has made a major investment in its restructuring practice in recent months. In September, it added partner Doug Taber, and in April it hired partners Rick Wynn, Bennett Spiegel, and Erin Brady.