Morrison & Foerster said Monday that it had expanded its partnership with a seasoned private funds specialist, Leonora Shalet, from Schulte Roth & Zabel.

The move marks the second partner addition to Morrison & Foerster's corporate department this month, after Mitchell Presser, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's former United States head of mergers and aqcquisitions and global transactions, joined the firm as a co-department leader.

Shalet comes to the firm's global private funds group in New York after more than a dozen years at hedge fund-focused Schulte Roth, where she had been special counsel. Earlier in her career she was an associate at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle.

She works with large, institutional managers, and her work focuses on U.S. and offshore credit funds,private equity funds, funds of funds, hybrid funds, hedge funds and managed accounts. In a statement, she said Morrison & Foerster's client roster of fund sponsors and major institutional investors aligned with her work.

"Morrison & Foerster has an excellent reputation in the funds and investment management space and a very impressive global platform," Shalet said.

In a statement, Stephanie Thomas, co-chair of Morrison & Foerster's private funds group, said that Shalet's experience will help the firm as it works to grow in the Northeast.

"Our clients will immediately benefit from Leonora's strategic counsel, as well as our deepened bench strength in New York," she said. "We are delighted to welcome Leonora to the firm and believe she is the perfect person to help us continue to grow our offerings on the East Coast."

In an interview after Presser's hire earlier this month, global corporate department co-chair Eric McCrath said that the firm was actively investing in the department even as M&A transactions slow due to economic uncertainty. He said that when the economy begins to recover, clients will need strong advisers, and Morrison & Foerster was playing the long game in its hiring decisions.

The firm posted double-digit revenue growth in 2019, which Larren Nashelsky, the firm's New York-based chairman, attributed partially to work from large corporate clients.

Even as the firm seeks to build in a period of economic distress, some corporate and M&A lawyers are finding opportunities elsewhere: Morrison & Foerster's former global co-head of M&A and London head of corporate, Graeme Sloan, left the firm in March to join on of its clients, an Oxford-based biopharmaceutical company, in a temporary position.

|

Read More

Ex-Freshfields US M&A Leader Lands at Morrison & Foerster