Latham Raids MoFo London Boss in Tech-Heavy M&A Play

Latham & Watkins has hired a three-partner M&A and private equity team from Morrison & Foerster in London, led by MoFo’s former City boss Andrew Boyd, in a move that underlines the firm’s appetite for tech-heavy deal work and high-end public company mandates. Boyd, previously managing partner of MoFo’s 60-lawyer London office, is joined by fellow partners Gary Brown and newly-minted partner Luke Rowland, all three decamping to Latham’s corporate bench in the City. The group brings a practice steeped in cross-border M&A and private equity instructions across technology, AI, fintech, semiconductors, and media and digital, with a sideline in advising listed-company boards on governance and strategic transactions. Latham’s London office managing partner Ed Barnett pitched the move as a response to “strong and growing demand for technology-driven mandates”, arguing that adding senior M&A partners of Boyd, Brown and Rowland’s profile “builds on our momentum in the City” and reinforces Latham’s self-styled status as the “go-to firm” for premium M&A in fast-growth tech sectors. Boyd and Brown are in fact returning alumni, reconnecting with Latham after roughly a decade as partners at MoFo. Their client list will raise few eyebrows on Wall Street or in the Valley: between them they have acted for the likes of Uber, Visa and Cambridge Quantum Computing, as well as SoftBank – already one of Latham’s marquee clients, which included its 1bn dollar investment in UK AV and AI unicorn Wayve and the headline-grabbing 24.3bn pound takeover of chip architect ARM Holdings. Latham, for its part, has been busy doubling down on SoftBank in its own right , advising the Japanese group this year on a 70m dollar Series B funding round for AI software creation platform Emergent, while also acting for arrangers led by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Mizuho on 40bn dollars of bridge financing to support SoftBank’s OpenAI investments. Rowland, who was promoted to partner at MoFo earlier this year, joins with a client roster that includes Shire, the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, and repeat instructions from Visa and SoftBank, adding another layer of capital markets and tech-tilted transactional experience to Latham’s London platform. The trio plug into what Latham says is the largest London office of any US firm, with around 530 lawyers in the City and roughly 140 partners and lawyers in its top-tier M&A practice – a group that has become a familiar name in global league tables for big-ticket cross-border M&A and private equity deals. Latham London Departures That scale has not insulated the office from turbulence. Latham’s London arm endured a spate of partner departures through 2024 as private equity and finance laterals became the hottest – and priciest – asset class in town, coinciding with the firm’s rollout of “super points” to further reward its highest-billing rainmakers. Since then, the firm has been in rebuild mode, adding a three-partner real estate finance team from A&O Shearman in January and private equity partner Ross Allardice from White & Case last summer to shore up its leveraged finance and sponsor coverage. MoFo, meanwhile, has moved quickly to fill the London leadership gap, installing litigator Ben Summerfield as Boyd’s successor as managing partner of its City office. Summerfield will juggle the role with his existing remit heading MoFo’s London litigation team, as the firm points to nine lateral partner hires into its London transactions department in the past 10 months, plus additional disputes arrivals – including a tech transactions and TMT M&A trio from Morgan Lewis and Baker McKenzie earlier this month. Latham continues to weaponise its City scale and sponsor relationships, while MoFo leans into a “reload, don’t retreat” concept built on sustained lateral investment in tech and transactions.