Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan is understood to be in talks to hire the major players from Shearman & Sterling’s Brussels office.
The group hire is expected to be led by Shearman office head Stephen Mavroghenis and competition partner Trevor Soames.
Soames led Howrey’s Brussels office until 2009 when he defected with four other partners and 13 associates for Shearman.
It is now understood that all five of the firm’s Brussels partners are in advanced talks to join Quinn Emanuel, first reported in legal blog Roll on Friday. The other partners are Geert Goeteyn, Miguel Rato and Matthew Readings. Goeteyn and Readings are based across Shearman’s London and Brussels offices.
Quinn opened in Brussels in 2014 making it the firm’s seventh European office. It is led by European completion head Nadine Herrmann, who joined the firm in Hamburg from Allen & Overy in 2012.
Shearman’s Brussels office has had a troubled past and in 2009 was left partnerless after antitrust specialists Annette Schild and Silvio Cappellari defected to Arnold & Porter.
The firm later relocated Düsseldorf partner Hans Meyer-Lindemann to Belgium to run the office with three associates.
The office was saved in 2011 when the firm successfully hired a five-partner team from Washington DC headquartered Howrey, which is now defunct. The team included the Soames who was Howrey’s global antitrust co-chair.
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