Clifford Chance (CC) has added a high yield finance partner in London office with the hire of Latham & Watkins senior associate Fabio Diminich.

Diminich, who began his career as an associate with Weil Gothsal & Manges in Washington DC, joined CC earlier this week (10 October).

His practice focuses around high-yield debt transactions and, since joining Latham in 2005, has worked on high-profile transactions for the US firm's high-yield underwriter clients, which include Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank

The move comes after CC relocated New York partner Tony Lopez to London this August to build up the practice, which has seen an upturn in work over the last year. Previously, CC had just one City partner dedicated to high yield – Michael Dakin, who heads up the London practice.

CC has been bulking up in the sector since re-hiring Dakin in September last year, when he returned from an in-house role with Middle East-based client Future Group. Dakin spent a year at the Dubai-based investment company during a slowdown in European high-yield work.

During the summer CC also recruited high-yield senior associates Henry Peacock and Claudia Kim from Sherman & Sterling and Paul Hastings respectively, bringing the total number of associates in the high-yield team to 16.

Dakin commented: "We saw a systemic change in the market last autumn and realised we needed to add more depth to the practice. For Fabio, this is a chance to be an instrumental part in establishing a practice and the clients that he has worked with in the past is one of the major draws for us in hiring him. There's considerable room for us to grow the high yield practice further and we will be on the lookout to hire more lawyers."

Rivals have said that CC and other magic circle firms which have attempted to enter the high-yield space, such as Linklaters, will find it hard to break into the underwriter market, which is traditionally dominated by US firms such as Latham, Shearman, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Cahill Gordon & Reindel.

Latham's high yield team has around 30 dedicated lawyers, including seven partners.

However, CC has won a significant amount of high yield debt work on behalf of its corporate clients.