Major hires continue expansion of New York office
LAWFUEL – Law News, Law Jobs Network – Linklaters today announces the elections of Larry Byrne, Joe Armao, Lance Croffoot-Suede and Paul Alfieri as partners in its New York-based US litigation practice. The appointments represent a major strengthening of the firm’s ability to meet the full range of its clients’ US needs, extending its capabilities to encompass the increasingly important areas of white collar/regulatory and securities and antitrust disputes. Their capabilities will also enhance the firm’s global securities, antitrust and financial markets regulatory offerings.
The new partners join Linklaters from White & Case LLP, where they were partners in the litigation practice. The team has a reputation for successfully handling significant civil, criminal and regulatory litigations as well as corporate governance and compliance counselling matters. A team of about 12 associates is expected to join the four partners at Linklaters.
David Cheyne, Linklaters senior partner, said:
“This is an established team with strong standing in the eyes of a number of our major global clients. We are committed to meeting the full range of our clients’ needs in the US as we do in Europe and Asia, and this is a significant step in the right direction.”
Paul Wickes, US managing partner, said:
“Linklaters in New York now has the capacity and expertise on the ground to handle assignments of virtually any size, complexity or area of expertise. Over the past three and a half years we have built an outstanding, full-service team of more than 115 US-trained lawyers, now including 26 partners. We are delighted to welcome them aboard.”
Larry Byrne and Joe Armao are former prosecutors and leading figures in the New York securities, white-collar crime and regulatory litigation bar. With distinguished records of Government service (Larry is a former Assistant United States Attorney and also served as Deputy Chief of the Organized Crime & Racketeering Section in the Department of Justice, and Joe occupied leading positions as a prosecutor in the office of the Manhattan District Attorney as well as serving as Chief Counsel to the Mollen Commission) they are highly regarded by the US Attorney’s Offices, the SEC, the New York Attorney General’s Office, the New York District Attorney and the judiciary.
The team’s high profile successes include serving as lead counsel in a precedent-setting settlements with the SEC and US Attorney’s Office, in which Royal Ahold settled charges without the imposition of any monetary penalty, and serving as lead defence counsel in the largest criminal and civil antitrust cases in the US, representing Takeda in the nationwide litigations known as the “vitamin cases”. Larry Byrne has served as lead counsel for one of the bank defendants in the Enron litigations. He is currently lead counsel in the first criminal antitrust case in which the US Department of Justice has sought to extradite an individual from the UK on criminal price fixing charges.
The expansion of Linklaters’ US litigation portfolio reflects the firm’s appetite to realise the full potential of the practice. It has already seen significant success representing a number of the firm’s major global clients as part of international teams on numerous cross-border matters, as well as handling cases across the US including in California, Chicago and Texas as well as in New York.
Larry Byrne will take over as head of the US litigation practice from Paul Wickes, who since July 2004 has combined his leadership of the practice with his role as the firm’s US Managing Partner. He also continues to practice.
