The London arm of New York's Chadbourne & Parke has made a rare senior UK hire with the appointment of Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw corporate and telecoms partner David Levin.

Levin, who was previously a partner at Pinsent Curtis (now Pinsents), joined Mayer Brown & Platt's London office in 1999 and won the US firm the UK utilities giant Centrica as a client in 2000. He is set to join his new firm at the end of July.
Chadbournes currently has three UK-qualified, six US-qualified and two dual-qualified partners in its 23-lawyer London office.

At the beginning of last year the top 100 firm's London arm hired Clifford Chance associate Adrian Congdon as a project finance partner in an effort to bolster its UK finance practice.

One Mayer Brown partner commented: "David did a lot of UK work for US clients before the Rowe & Maw merger so it was difficult to for him to sustain that practice in the new firm. At Chadbournes he will be able to return to that kind of role."

His departure is the first partner-level corporate departure for Mayer Brown since its merger with Rowe & Maw last February.

The only other lawyers to have left the London office since the merger are the nine-lawyer international arbitration team headed by partners John Miles and Marie Kidwell, who resigned in December to move to the London arm of Hunton & Williams.

Chadbournes declined to comment on the move.