Ince & Co is opening a second German office in Cologne with the hire of two partners and two associates.
CMS partner Stefan Segger and Bach Langheid Dallmayr partner Eva-Maria Goergen will join Ince in due course. The duo specialise in non-marine insurance and reinsurance.
Segger, a former head of CMS’s insurance group in Germany, is bringing CMS associates Barbara Lorscheid and Marie Holzhauer with him to Ince.
Ince senior partner Jan Heuvels said the team fitted “perfectly” within Ince from a cultural standpoint and that the Cologne launch was consistent with the firm’s strategy of growing its business in core sectors and geographies.
The Cologne opening follows the recent launch of Ince Consultancy, headquartered in Hamburg, which will provide a range of non-legal services to clients in the shipping, energy, insurance, aviation, trade and real estate industries.
Ince is the second firm to announce a Cologne launch in the last six months. DWF opened in Germany in December through a local merger, with Cologne one of its three German offices.
Late last year Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer decided to merge its Cologne and Düsseldorf offices, with lawyers in Cologne moving to Düsseldorf.
Ince has seen a number of high profile exits over the last year amid two redundancy consultations for lawyers and business services staff. Earlier this month it emerged Ince Greece boss and shipping partner Nick Shepherd had exited for Wikborg Rein.