Top Firms Poach M&A Talent as $1.4 Trillion Deal Market Rebounds

Welcome back to the Big Law Business column. I’m Roy Strom, and today we look at the battle for talent in New York’s M&A market. Sign up for Business & Practice, a free morning newsletter from Bloomberg Law.

Despite major headwinds through the first half of the year, the deals market continued to rebound, giving corporate firms the green light to hire their next superstar.

Global M&A values rose 18.5% from the year-ago period to $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg league tables show, fueling appetites at top-ranked firms for partner hiring.

The 50 largest firms through mid-June hire 28 M&A partners in New York, according to recruiting firm Macrae, following a record 65 such moves in 2024. The record is in reach this year after firms announced a handful of New York M&A hires in late June, including Proskauer’s addition of former Paul Weiss partner Sarah Stasny.

In the first half of the year, firms including Sidley Austin, Davis Polk, Paul Hastings and Latham & Watkins made additions that could help them vault up the league tables. Or, in the case of Latham, stay at the top. The firm beat out main rival Kirkland & Ellis to capture the No. 1 M&A adviser spot through six months, Bloomberg’s league tables show.

Public Company Play

Firms are making plays for public company dealmakers, as evidenced by Latham’s hire of Wachtell partner Zach Podolsky, Paul Hastings poaching Kirkland partner Eric Schiele, and Sidley adding Jones Day partner David Grubman. Davis Polk’s addition of Debevoise & Plimpton partner Michael Diz, who was a longtime New Yorker before moving his practice to Northern California in 2021, adds a prominent player in both private equity and public company deals.

“Public company M&A is still a top practice that firms want to be in,” said Jon Truster, a New York-based partner at Macrae. “And those hires in the last three or four months are really significant moves. They’re difference-makers that fit the strategies of those firms.”

The biggest public company deals have always been prestigious, but the recent focus on capturing that work may also be strategic.

That’s because private equity firms continue to struggle to offload their portfolio companies, making public company transactions the more growth-oriented side of the deals business—at least for now.

During Latham’s discussions with Podolsky, the firm stressed how the its platform of broad practice groups and clients provide opportunities over the next two decades, Marc Jaffe, the firm’s New York office managing partner, said in an interview. The firm has a “vision of market leadership” in the deals space, he said.

Latham has a strong private equity practice, headlined by its relationship with Carlyle. But the firm is also focusing long-term on its public company dealmaking, said Paul Kukish, global co-chair of Latham’s M&A and private equity practice group.

“Having an incredibly strong public M&A offering is a hugely important part of how we view the overall PE and M&A group,” Kukish said.

Paul Hastings’ strategy to bring on Schiele from Kirkland also stressed the firm’s long-term plan to break into the highest tier of M&A firms, Frank Lopez, Paul Hastings’ chairman, told me. He said the firm can take “meaningful market share” in the deals space over the next two or three years. Much of that could come by handling major transactions for the firm’s current clients.

“It’s expanding our work with them into premier M&A, and you can only do that with the top talent,” Lopez said. “Once you get that top talent, you can hold onto that work or even take work away from the other firms.”

We dove into Davis Polk’s M&A growth strategy in this space not long ago. While the firm is focusing more on bulking up its private equity practice, it is doing that from a position of strength in public company deals.

Sidley’s additions kicked off in January, when the firm hired Jones Day’s Grubman and Simpson Thacher partner Adam Cromie. The pair previously worked together at Jones Day advising on public company M&A. Sidley then added lawyers from Milbank, Fried Frank, and Skadden, as well as another Jones Day partner.

The Grubman-Cromie hire is already paying dividends for the firm. The duo in April represented publicly traded Lineage Inc. in a $247 million acquisition of cold storage warehouses and other assets from Tyson Foods Inc.

Those are the kinds of deals that plenty of firms are angling for, all with the same goal: Gobbling up market share to vault up the league tables.

I don’t expect the hiring to slow down any time soon.

Worth Your Time

On M&A: Big Law M&A practitioners see a reason for optimism with the Trump administration easing the path for transactions with national security implications, Mahira Dayal reports.

On Big Law Moves: The litigation boutique formed by Karen Dunn and other ex-Paul Weiss partners added a partner from Willkie, another firm that struck a deal with the Trump administration, Tatyana Monnay reports.

On Big Law Moves II: Jenner & Block is expanding its mass tort practice, bringing on a team of Mayer Brown partners who have a focus on PFAS litigation.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading and please send me your thoughts, critiques, and tips.