In Corporate Hiring Push, O'Melveny Adds 2 Film Finance Partners From Morgan Lewis
Two partners who represent the financiers of movies, television and music have jumped to O'Melveny as the firm aims to grow its corporate practice.
March 17, 2020 at 12:25 PM
3 minute read
Two Morgan, Lewis & Bockius partners who represent lenders and investors in the entertainment industry have jumped to O'Melveny & Myers in New York, the latest corporate partners to join O'Melveny as it seeks to build the practice.
Terrence Dugan, who goes by Terry, and Christopher Owens started at O'Melveny on Monday after more than 15 years at Morgan Lewis. Dugan said Morgan Lewis long had the leading film finance group in the country but said the retirement of its longtime leader, Michael Chapnick, last year got him and Owens thinking about their own practice amid the transition.
"Chris and I were the lone entertainment lawyers in that group and we were looking for a platform to grow the practice," he said, adding that they would benefit from O'Melveny's historic strength in entertainment law. He said he's expanded his practice in recent years to include music-industry clients.
Sung Pak, who leads O'Melveny's corporate finance practice, said the addition of Dugan and Owens fit in with the firm's strategic push into more transactional work. The hires come four months after O'Melveny added corporate finance lawyer Jeff Norton from Dechert and aviation finance lawyer Jason Kaplan from Hughes Hubbard & Reed. Pak said the firm has been adding corporate associates to work with its growing ranks of partners.
"We have a goal of growing corporate, particularly in New York, but everywhere, and finance [is] a big part of that," he said. "The approach that we're taking is not just having some hypothetical goal based on what everybody else is doing, but looking at our own platform, looking at our strengths, looking at our brand."
Pak said his firm is seeking to add partners in the private-credit space and at the intersection of restructuring and finance.
According to O'Melveny, Dugan and Owens represent banks, private equity firms and other big funders in entertainment transactions. Their deals have involved major and independent film students, production companies, TV networks, record labels and content producers.
Dugan's former Morgan Lewis profile described him as having "a focus on the energy and media sectors," though an O'Melveny spokesman said he had pivoted away from energy in recent years.
In an interview, Dugan said he and Owens have clients outside the entertainment industry, too, and work for "a leading senior lender agent bank in the Hollywood space," but declined to name it.
Dugan, who said he worked with a recruiter in the move, noted he'd been across the table from O'Melveny lawyers several times over the course of his career.
While Hollywood studios and movie theaters are taking blows because of the novel coronavirus outbreak, Dugan said he was hopeful that the pandemic's impact won't be as bad as feared. If it is, however, Dugan said he and Owens can also advise clients on workouts and bankruptcies, noting, "Lawyers make money when things are good, they make money when things are bad."
A Morgan Lewis spokeswoman said the firm's entertainment finance practice is a "decades-long legacy practice" that remains strong and said the firm wished its departing lawyers well.
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