City firm benefits from mobile giant's review of legal advisers

Travers Smith has won Vodafone as a first-time client, with the City firm securing a mandate to carry out pensions work for the telecoms giant.

The firm was appointed in December last year, despite missing out on a spot on Vodafone's new UK panel announced in September 2011.

The relationship will be managed by Travers pensions partner Peter Esam, with the firm hoping to expand the relationship into off panel mandates in other practices where possible.

Vodafone completed a review of its group and UK legal advisers last year, with Olswang and DLA Piper scoring first-time appointments to the roster. Other firms appointed to the panel included Linklaters, Slaughter and May, Herbert Smith, Hogan Lovells and Norton Rose, while firms including Baker & McKenzie, Pinsent Masons and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer lost their place on the list.

News of the client win comes as Travers strengthens its relationship with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) through a partner secondment. Litigation partner Toby Robinson is set to join the bank as interim head of litigation, regulatory and investigations, while the current post-holder is on leave for six months.

Robinson has been a partner at Travers since 2008, when he joined from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where he was an associate in the financial institutions disputes group.

Robinson's secondment is an unusual move for Travers, with the firm rarely sending partners in-house. In recent years the only partner to have been seconded has been corporate lawyer Anthony Foster, who joined the Bank of England for a six-month period in January 2009.