US restructuring leader Bingham McCutchen has beefed up its general City finance practice with the hire of Shearman & Sterling partner Stephen Peppiatt.

Peppiatt, who has been a projects partner with Shearman in London for 10 years, is set to leave at the end of September and join Bingham in October to help expand the firm's general finance practice in London.

As reported by Legal Week earlier this summer, Peppiatt, whose practice focuses on banking clients, told Shearman at the beginning of the year that he wanted to leave to act on a broader range of finance work.

At Bingham he will join Sarah Coucher to become the second UK-qualified partner in the banking, commercial and structured finance group, working on general finance work, senior debt and distressed debt for financial institutions and hedge funds.

The appointment is aimed at broadening Bingham's City finance practice beyond its core financial restructuring business, which is strongly focused on distressed debt and bondholder work.

James Roome, Bingham's UK managing partner, told Legal Week: "Stephen has a particular background in projects as well as broad finance experience and will come here to work for a range of financial institution clients. For over a year, we have been looking for a partner to provide extra bench strength in our finance practice and he is just the person we were after."

In addition to Coucher, Bingham also has five UK-qualified associates working in its commercial finance group and is also bringing in another from Allen & Overy in the next month.

The group has acted on matters including representing the banks on the Gate Gourmet restructuring and advising on the restructuring of Queens Moat Houses and Jarvis.

Earlier this month Bingham lost dual-qualified restructuring partner Andrew Rotenberg. Rotenberg is set to join Jones Day as a partner on 18 September.