South African firm ENS has hired a team of three senior lawyers from DLA Piper’s South African affiliate, including the firm’s corporate and commercial head.
DLA Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr’s national corporate and commercial head Ian Hayes and his team will join ENS in September. Hayes’ team comprises Lydia Shadrach-Razzino and Marc Friedman - who both held the partner-equivalent role of director at DLA - a senior associate, two associates and support staff.
Hayes joins ENS as a director and will lead the corporate and commercial practice along with chairman Michael Katz, and directors Doron Joffe and Koos Pretorius. Friedman and Shadrach-Razzino also join as directors.
According to ENS chief executive Piet Faber, the hires were opportunistic. “Hayes was national head at DLA and is a really big name in the industry. We were only too pleased to welcome [his team] in. There’s only a handful of firms that do substantial M&A deals in the country and he is one of the top five [lawyers] doing the work.”
Faber added that his firm had taken on 23 new partners since January, some of which came from international firms like Norton Rose and Eversheds.
Earlier this month, ENS announced that it was expanding in Africa by launching offices in Rwanda and Burundi. Faber said that further launches were in the pipeline, but declined to give any more details.
Elsewhere, Linklaters is in talks with another firm in South Africa, Webber Wentzel, over an alliance, not long after completing a similar deal in Australia.
South African law firms are incorporated, not limited liability partnerships, and as a result have directors, not partners.
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