Sidley Austin has sealed the hire of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher capital markets partner Dorothee Fischer-Appelt, who is switching between the City offices of the two US firms.

Fischer-Appelt, who will become the fifth partner in Sidley's London capital markets team, has a practice focused on US and international capital markets, cross-border M&A, joint ventures and restructurings. As a German speaker, she will lead Sidley's push into the Central and Eastern European (CEE) corporate and capital markets.

The US firm's London office is one of just a few City practices to offer advice in the busy high-yield debt market from both a US and UK law angle.

The leadership of Sidley's City capital markets team was recently taken over by Stephen Roith, who joined from Clifford Chance last year to co-head the practice alongside Mark Wiltshire, who retired in March this year.

Roith said: "Dorothee brings us significant additional US securities law expertise, client contacts and knowledge of the European capital markets, not least in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This is also a crucial capability for our recent bid to be more active in the CEE region, including countries like Russia and Kazakhstan, which have been seeing very active capital markets."

Fischer-Appelt made partner at Gibson Dunn in November 2006 when she joined from Allen & Overy, where she worked as an associate after training with US firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

Sidley recently topped Thomson Reuters' EMEA rankings for debt capital market deal volume in the first quarter of 2011, advising the issuer on 31 deals worth a total of $25bn (£15bn).