Ashurst Morris Crisp has hired a partner from Spanish giant Garrigues to launch a local tax practice and appointed a new managing partner for its Madrid arm.

London-based corporate finance and M&A partner Steven Fox transferred to Ashursts' 19-lawyer Madrid practice this month to succeed current managing partner Duncan Stiles.

In addition to the management shake-up, Ashursts has raided 1,000-lawyer Garrigues for a tax partner to launch a new local practice. Eduardo Gracia becomes the firm's fourth Spanish-based partner, working alongside Fox, Gonzalo Jimenez-Blanco and Jesus Almoguera.

Tax is the third practice launch for the office in the last 12 months, after January's appointment of Baker & McKenzie property lawyer Cristina Calvo and the hire last October of Jimenez-Blanco, the general counsel at BT Ignite Espana, to set up a TMT group.

Meanwhile, Stiles, who has overseen the Spanish operations since its launch in January 2001, will relocate to the firm's London HQ to concentrate on his corporate practice.

"We identified Steven as the successor 12 months ago and he will be able to continue to develop the office while still being able to work with clients," said Stiles.

Stiles' tenure as Ashursts' Spanish head has seen the practice grow from scratch to bring in annual revenues of more than £3m in its latest financial year with the practice in 2002 more than doubling its turnover on its launch year.

The office has worked on a number of headline deals including Cinven's e1.2bn (£830m) purchase of Vivendi Universal's healthcare unit and CDC's e1.9bn (£1.3bn) acquisition of France Telecom's radio masts business.