Freshfields has a new U.S. managing partner, elevating firm veteran Matthew Herman to succeed former U.S. head Peter Lyons.

New York-based Herman, who joined the Magic Circle firm in 2003 as it launched its U.S. M&A practice, is tracing Lyons' trajectory. Both attorneys served as co-heads of global M&A for the firm before rising to the top U.S. role. But while Lyons ceded that position to Herman when he was promoted in 2016, Herman will handle both responsibilities moving forward.

"I'm holding onto my client-facing role because I love doing that. Taking on the additional responsibility of U.S. managing partner is a job that I welcome," he said. "It's not to the exclusion of client work or the exclusion of work that I've done with my global M&A co-heads."

Herman's recent representations include advising Starbucks on the $7.15 billion sale of its consumer packaged goods and food service business to Nestlé, Dubai Aerospace Enterprise on its acquisition of AWAS and the sale of StandardAero, and Japan Tobacco on its $5 billion acquisition of Natural American Spirit from Reynolds American.

Herman came to Freshfields as an associate from dissolved California firm Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, and made partner in 2006. He's since played a role in the expansion of the firm's corporate practice in New York, overseeing the hire of Lyons from Shearman & Sterling and Mitchell Presser from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

"I'd like to congratulate Matt on being named U.S. managing partner, a recognition that is well deserved," Freshfields managing partner Stephan Eilers said in a statement. "We have been investing heavily in our US business and I am confident that the firm will continue its success under his leadership in the U.S."

In late October Freshfields made a splash with the acquisition of a four-partner M&A team from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton led by Ethan Klingsberg. The firm has taken aim at growing transactional work in recent years after initially building out U.S. disputes and antitrust practices in the first part of the century.

"This hire is a natural progression of that strategy: shifting our focus toward U.S.-headquartered clients and, as a firm, doing everything that's consequential for them regardless of that," Herman said.

Freshfields has continued to grow other practices as well. In February, the firm recruited Aimen Mir, a former top official of the Committee on Foreign Investment from the U.S. Department of the Treasury to lead its CFIUS practice in Washington, D.C. In January, it named New York partner Noiana Marigo the first U.S. leader of its international arbitration practice. And its 2018 hire of Eric Mahr, the former director of litigation for the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division was a significant move in that space.

Herman says the firm has no immediate plans to expand in the U.S. beyond its two East Coast locations, but neither is it ruling it out.

"We always remain open to considering where strategically our business needs to grow," he said.

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