DWF has made a senior hire from Cobbetts with the addition of the firm's head of EU competition, Jonathan Branton.

Branton is joining the Manchester office of DWF and will take up the role of national head of EU competition at the firm.

His move comes after DWF and Cobbetts called off merger talks earlier this year. He has more than 20 years' experience in all aspects of EU and UK competition law, including restrictive agreements, abuse of dominant position and merger control.

His arrival brings the number of competition partners at DWF to three, joining Manchester-based Craig Chaplin and Tristan Meeares-White in Leeds.

Branton joined Cobbetts in 2008 from Irish heavyweight Matheson Ormsby Prentice (MOP) and led the national firm's EU and competition team. Prior to MOP, he spent more than ten years at Squire Sanders legacy firm Hammonds in Brussels, where he maintains a regular presence through a consistent workload of cases with the European Commission.

Stephen Houston, the national head of the corporate and commercial team at DWF, said: "Jonathan has an excellent reputation in the marketplace, with first class clients and connections. Such wide ranging EU competition skills and experience are rare and this is an exciting appointment for us."

The mooted merger between DWF and Cobbetts – news of which first emerged when an "over-zealous" member of DWF's IT team registered the dwfcobbetts.co.uk domain name – was called off in January, with the firms citing "current uncertainty in market conditions".