Latham & Watkins is on the verge of securing its long-awaited Spanish launch with the top 10 US giant planning to establish bases in Madrid and Barcelona.

Partners at both Latham and Cuatrecasas last week confirmed the US giant is in advanced talks with respected Cuatrecasas corporate partner Jose Luis Blanco Ruiz to set up the firm's Spanish practice, with talks still going on as Legal Week went to press.

Blanco Ruiz currently works in Barcelona but has a lot of clients in Spain's primary legal market, Madrid, where he will be based. However, the US firm is also understood to be keen to maintain a smaller branch in Barcelona.

Blanco Ruiz, who joined Cuatrecasas in 1998, has handled a number of high-profile corporate deals, including advising directory publishing group Yell on its acquisition of a €3bn (£2bn) majority stake in Spanish phone directory Telefonica Publicidad & Informacion.

As reported on legalweek.com (26 October), one Latham partner commented: "We are in talks [with Blanco Ruiz] and hopefully we should know whether we are to proceed or not fairly quickly."

A launch would make Latham one of only a handful of US-based firms to have launched locally in Spain, alongside Jones Day and Baker & McKenzie.

However, foreign advisers have been attracted to the jurisdiction by the flood of big-ticket corporate deals, including the prolonged bidding war for Spanish power group Endesa – one of the largest global corporate bids of 2006.

So far, Latham has managed its Iberia relationships via a small Spanish desk based at its Brussels office under the leadership of competition specialist Javier Ruiz Calzado.

The launch would also go a long way towards completing Latham's sizeable network in western Europe, which already includes substantial local law practices in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium.

Other major appointments in Europe have seen Latham beef up its German private equity practice with the recruitment of Ashurst heavyweight Joerg Kirchner in December last year, while in March the firm recruited high-billing corporate tax duo Daniel Friel and Sean Finn from Lovells' London HQ.