Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has hired a trio of New York restructuring partners from Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, including the newly merged US firm's co-chair of bankruptcy and restructuring.

Mark Liscio – co-chair of the merged firm's restructuring group – has joined Freshfields alongside fellow partners Madlyn Primoff and Scott Talmadge. The trio have worked together for more than a decade at legacy Kaye Scholer, which they joined in 2005 from Clifford Chance.

Kaye Scholer merged with US counterpart Arnold & Porter on 1 January this year, creating a firm with combined revenues of around $1bn.

The partner trio handles a mix of contentious and non-contentious restructuring work, and has worked with clients including JP Morgan, Barclays and HSBC, with recent cases involving Paragon Offshore Drilling and Arch Coal.

Freshfields global head of restructuring Ken Baird said: "This was a hole in our offering – we'd been wanting to add a US restructuring group for about three years. We were seeing situations where clients were using a big US firm in addition to us because they needed that US piece; that wasn't the wrong decision for the client, but it wasn't the right answer.

"By bolting on this team we are able to present a truly global offering to clients across the restructuring spectrum that no other firm can match."

The hires are the latest in a string of additions to Freshfields' US offering in recent years. The US practice has more than doubled in size during the past 10 years and now counts nearly 200 lawyers, with some 10 partners joining in the past three years.

Freshfields US managing partner Peter Lyons, who joined from Shearman & Sterling in 2014, added: "We really needed this expertise. It means that we now cover the bases that we need to have covered in the US – though we will continue to grow the business."

Other New York hires for Freshfields in recent years include former Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz M&A partner Mitchell Presser and former Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom banking partner James Douglas, as well as Valerie Ford Jacob, a former senior partner at Fried Frank.

The firm also last year added Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft corporate partner Aly El Hamamsy.

Freshfields' magic circle rivals have also been making moves to boost their US capabilities of late. Earlier this year, Allen & Overy took a three-partner New York finance and securities team from Paul Hastings, while Linklaters recently boosted its Washington DC disputes practice with the hire of the US Department of Justice's principal associate deputy attorney general Matt Axelrod.