Weil Gotshal & Manges is to strengthen its City finance practice with the hire of former Ashurst banking partner James Hogben.

Hogben, who stepped down from Ashurst's partnership in March 2010, is set to join Weil next week (23 January).

He specialises in general banking law and has particular expertise in cross-border leveraged finance and acquisition finance transactions. At Weil, Hogben will work alongside London finance head Jacky Kelly and structured finance partner Steven Ong.

Kelly said: "James has a wealth of experience which complements the work that we do in London. We have been incredibly busy with financings for our private equity clients on their acquisitions as well as a raft of refinancings and securitisations and it's great to have James on board as part of our long-term strategy to substantially grow the finance practice."

While at Ashurst Hogben worked with clients including ICICI Bank, RBS, Lloyds, Lehman, HBOS, Barclays Capital, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, Mizuho and HSBC.

He has worked on deals including the £6.15bn financing of the merger of Saga and the AA and the £1.4bn acquisition of stock leasing company Porterbrook by a consortium of banks and investors in 2008.

His hire comes after London finance partner Michael Nicklin left Weil to join Ropes & Gray in Hong Kong earlier this month, while high yield specialist Peter Schwartz left Weil in October last year to join the City arm of Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy.