Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy has hired a high yield specialist from the City arm of New York rival Weil Gotshal & Manges as leading law firms continue to invest in their deal finance teams.

Peter Schwartz is joining as a partner in Milbank's global securities group in London. His practice is focused primarily on representing underwriters and issuers in securities offerings, particularly high yield debt.

The US and UK-qualified Schwartz, who was in 2008 promoted to partner at Weil Gotshal, also has experience of covering equity capital markets transactions.

Schwartz will be the 15th partner in Milbank's London office, which focuses largely on M&A and banking work. He has previously advised clients including Merrill Lynch, Citigroup Capital Markets and Deutsche Bank as well as private equity houses PAI partners and Lion Capital.

Marcelo Mottesi, the firmwide head of Milbank's securities practice, commented, "We are very excited to be growing our global securities group in our London office. Peter is widely recognised as a leading securities lawyer in the London market and his arrival at Milbank will significantly enhance our global capabilities."

Weil Gotshal has 21 partners remaining in London, out of which six handle capital markets and banking finance work. Out of those, just one is a pure high yield partner – David Meredith, who is US-qualified.

Schwartz's hire comes two months after Milbank sent a jolt through the Manhattan legal community with the hire of a five-partner banking team from Latham & Watkins.

The team, comprising Marc Hanrahan, Ronan Wicks, Marcus Dougherty, Patrick Flanagan and Lauren Hanrahan, were all partners in Latham's highly-regarded global banking and leveraged finance group. The move was one of the largest ever team hires seen in New York.

The UK appointment also comes as a number of law firms move to expand their deal finance teams with a view to servicing an expected increase in demand for high yield finance to back European takeovers. Firms to make senior UK hires in the area in recent months include Latham, Allen & Overy, Linklaters and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

• Click here to see an interview with Schwartz, conducted by Unquote magazine, an affiliate title of Legal Week.