Slaughter and May corporate partner Sanjev Warna-kula-suriya has left the firm for Latham & Watkins.
Warna-kula-suriya exits Slaughters after almost 20 years. He is joining the US firm’s corporate practice in London.
He advises private equity sponsors, hedge funds, commercial and investment banks and corporates on capital raising and investment transactions.
Partner departures from Slaughter and May to rival firms are still extremely rare. However Slaughters has now lost one partner a year for the last three years: tax partner Graham Iversen joined Greenberg Traurig in 2014 and finance partner Mark Dwyer joined DLA Piper last year.
Latham has been expanding its finance, corporate and litigation teams in the last few months, hiring a number of heavy hitters to its City groups.
Last week the firm confirmed the arrival of Allen & Overy (A&O) former banking head Stephen Kensell, while Ashurst partner Simon Baskerville is due to join the restructuring team later this year.
Baskerville’s hire marked the second time Latham has raided Ashurst’s City offices this year. Financial regulatory head Rob Moulton also announced he was making the same move in July.
On the real estate finance side, Dechert partner Jeremy Trinder and GE Capital in-houser Quentin Gwyer have also joined Latham in London, with their practices expected to align with Warna-kula-suriya’s focus on commercial mortgage-backed securities and capital markets.
The new recruits in the corporate and finance departments follow Latham’s new litigation joiners earlier in the year, which included Debevoise & Plimpton partner Sophie Lamb and Stuart Alford QC from the UK’s Serious Fraud Office.
Warna-kula-suriya’s departure comes as Slaughters’ partnership headcount continues to fall. Between 2007 and 2013 numbers decreased by 12 per cent, from 133 to 117, with the partnership dropping once more in 2015.
The firm has also lost a number of partners to in-house roles in recent years, including UK Export finance legal head Lucy Wylde and Competition & Markets Authority general counsel Sarah Cardell.
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