Former Dewey & LeBoeuf executive partner Stephen Horvath has joined Greenberg Traurig Maher as a shareholder in its London corporate and securities practice.

Horvath, Dewey's former European M&A practice head and member of its European Council, was made executive partner as the firm began to experience financial difficulty last year, before it was eventually wound up.

The move to bring Horvath to Greenberg has been in the pipeline for more than a year. In May 2012, as Dewey was going into administration, Greenberg acquired its highly respected Warsaw office, which had six equity partners and more than 50 lawyers, as well as corporate finance partners Frank Adams and Federico Salinas.

Initial discussions with Horvath also took place at that time but were made more complicated by his role as executive partner at Dewey, which involved him handling much of the fallout from the firm's bankruptcy.

Horvath's practice includes advising on mergers and acquisitions, corporate and project finance, privatisation and commercial transactions. He is best known for several ground-breaking acquisition, financing and privatisation transactions in the emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe.

He advised Raiffeisen Bank International on the €490m (£409m) acquisition of a 70% share in Polbank EFG, the Polish banking business of the Greek bank EFG Eurobank. The transaction required a novel transformation of Polbank from a branch of EFG into a stand-alone bank and the development of a complex cross-shareholding structure.

Horvath practiced with Hunton & Williams, relocating to Europe in 1996 and serving as managing partner of its London office. He joined Dewey in 2002.