Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy has strengthened its City leveraged finance practice with the hire of Neil Caddy from Mayer Brown.

Caddy will join the US firm's London arm later this month as a partner after around two and a half years with Mayer Brown. He joined Mayer Brown as a partner in early 2010 from Allen & Overy and in 2006 spent a seven month secondment with the financial sponsors group at JPMorgan, which remains one of his clients.

Caddy, who advises on acquisition and other event driven financing as well as restructurings, is the third lateral partner hire Milbank has made in London so far this year and will join a team of eight finance partners in Milbank's City arm.

The firm brought in high-profile corporate partner Mark Stamp from magic circle firm Linklaters in June and shortly after this launched a City antitrust practice with the hire of competition partner Nicholas Spearing from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Milbank previously tried to hire SJ Berwin competition heavyweight Stephen Kon last year but he decided to remain with the UK firm and was subsequently elected as senior partner.

Milbank's London head of leveraged finance Suhrud Mehta said: "[Caddy] has the right mix of technical and commercial abilities, honed on many of the major European leveraged deals. He also has significant restructuring expertise – valuable not only to our leveraged finance practice but also to financial restructuring."

Mayer Brown has seen a string of partner departures from its London office over the last year, with high-profile litigator Clare Canning becoming global general counsel of accounting giant Ernst & Young, while Simon Willis and Matthew Lawson, who joined Mayer Brown alongside Canning in 2007 from legacy Barlow Lyde & Gilbert, quit for the London office of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe. Co-head of capital markets Stephanie Bates also joined Orrick, while litigation partner Andrew Legg joined the London arm of Eversheds.

Other departures include James Dodsworth, a commercial real estate lawyer, who left the firm for White & Case, while real estate head Peter Sugden left to become managing partner of Katten Muchin Rosenman's London office.