Shepherd and Wedderburn has strengthened its finance and restructuring team with the hire of Eversheds' former Edinburgh chief Colin McKay.

Banking and finance partner McKay, who is joining Shepherds on 15 July, will split his time between the Scots firm's Edinburgh and London offices.

He joined Eversheds in 2008 alongside former McGrigors managing partner Colin Gray, ahead of the firm's launch in Scotland in 2009.

As well as heading up Eversheds' Edinburgh base, he also served as the firm's relationship partner for Lloyds Banking Group's commercial division and, through his appointment, Shepherds will hope to secure some of the bank's work.

His addition brings the number of partners at Shepherds to 63 and follows the appointments of real estate and infrastructure partners Sally Morris-Smith and Jonathan Rickard from Kennedys and Addleshaw Goddard respectively.

Shepherds chief exec Stephen Gibb (pictured) said: "Strategically, we have among other areas identified growth opportunities in real estate in London and finance overall. We have already announced the arrival of two new real estate partners and in identifying that the time was right to further strengthen our banking offering, were keen to add Colin to our team.

"Colin has been based in London for a number of years and has an impressive network of connections which we expect will quickly generate more work for the firm."

Eversheds has seen a number of partner departures of late including last month's exit of China head Sharon Shi to a GC role at Shanghai Environment Group. In May, a four-partner real estate team left for DWF while 116 staff were made redundant following a restructuring process announced at the start of the year.