By Philip Hoult
Squire Sanders & Dempsey has become the latest US firm to move into English law by hiring a team of lawyers from Clyde & Co.
Cross-border merger and acquisitions partner Cathy Horton joined Squires last week, together with two assistants, Sara Johns and Deborah Robson.
The hiring of Horton and her team is the first step in the firm's ambition to build a 100-lawyer strong practice in London by the end of the year 2000.
Horton said that she had joined Squires because it was "serious about its global ambitions".
Joseph Markoski, the managing partner of the firm's four-partner London office, said that the addition of an English law capability
was "simply a matter of time".
"We grew increasingly weary of referring our treasured clients to English solicitors," he said.
Squires' move comes only a week after Legal Week revealed that blue-chip Wall Street firm Sullivan & Cromwell had hired Norton Rose's highly-rated projects partner Jamie Logie as its first English lawyer.
Legal Week also revealed
that McDermott Will & Emery was planning to build a full service office in London with up to 250 lawyers in two to three years' time.
Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Squires is a top 40 US firm by size, with 176 partners and 468 lawyers in total, spread across 18 offices worldwide.
The firm has a strong reputation for its mainstream corporate, IT and telecoms practices.
It has expanded rapidly in the last five years. Squires opened offices in Hong Kong and Taipei last September and in the previous April took on New York firm Seward & Kissel's Budapest lawyers when Sewards decided to pull out of the Hungarian capital.