King & Spalding has expanded its real estate finance practice in New York through recruiting partners Scott Levine and Christine O’Connell from Arnold & Porter.
In massive real property financing transactions, Levine and O’Connell constitute institutional lenders, inclusive of non-public equity finances, hedge funds, and investment banks.
Their movements observe the addition to King & Spalding’s New York office closing June of an 8-legal professional real estate finance group from Riemer & Braunstein, with partners Erik Andersen, Elizabeth Gable, and Jared Zaben.
King & Spalding, based totally in Atlanta, has made a robust push to make bigger its corporate and finance capabilities in New York over the past numerous years, touchdown dealmaker Jim Woolery to go its M&A and company governance practices in 2017, and Jonathan Melmed ultimate 12 months as a part of a seven-legal professional team of personal equity lawyers to co-chair its worldwide non-public equity exercise.
“Our number one area of growth is in New York and London,” stated Todd Holleman, the New York-based chief of King & Spalding’s corporate, finance, and investment practice. “We are the usage of New York to assist power the possibilities and paintings throughout the platform. We knew Scott and Christine via Erik and Elizabeth, so that they may be a natural extension to us.” With Levine and O’Connell, Holleman stated, the company has 17 real estate finance legal professionals in New York who are part of a real estate group with ninety specialists worldwide.
King & Spalding’s lawyer head in New York has grown to about 2 hundred legal professionals—up from one hundred seventy last August. With approximately 1 a hundred legal professionals globally, the company suggested a 10.8% revenue boom final 12 months, to $1.26 billion.
Calling Levine and O’Connell “plugged in and energetic,” Holleman said their interest in operating with the alternative attorneys in the real estate finance and associated practices to increase purchaser relationships—both theirs and those of the firm—is what King & Spalding seems to be looking for in lateral partners.
The company’s way of life emphasizes and rewards “operating in organizations, being collaborative and sharing credit,” he stated. “That resonates with a lot of our laterals, and part of our boom plan in New York is to use that difference to draw talent.”
O’Connell said King & Spalding’s edition of the real estate finance crew from Riemer & Braunstein turned into the impetus for her and Levine’s move to the firm, as the 2 have a terrific relationship with the crew’s leaders, Andersen and Gable.
“Scott and I have worked with them or across from them on deals for decades,” O’Connell said. “We noticed what they have been doing right here, and it became very exciting to us. We are searching for the next phase of our profession, and it’s a hazard to have involvement in building something.”
“It’s a tiny industry—and lots of oldsters recognize us and Erik and Elizabeth,” she introduced, so the combination is a danger to develop the greater commercial enterprise.
Levine and O’Connell have practiced collectively, considering starting their criminal careers at New York-based Kaye Scholer 12 years in the past. That firm merged with Washington-based Arnold & Porter in 2016 to form Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer.
“We commenced the same day in the identical group, and we had been continually in one office other than each other,” Levine said. While the two don’t get paintings on the same matters, they said their careers had had an identical trajectory.
With Andersen and Gable’s crew, King & Spalding now has a “nicely-advanced institution” in New York that is still in increase mode, Levine said. “They’ve got an excellent engine occurring, and, with King & Spalding’s extensive platform, we can deliver in the tax, ERISA, and environmental areas for deals,” he said, which is useful for his or her private equity lender clients.
“Scott and Christine are first-rate additions to the practice and a high-quality comply with-directly to the eight-legal professional team we employed last year,” said the firm’s New York coping with partner, Edward Kehoe, in a statement. “We are investing heavily throughout our transactional practices in New York, and real property is one of the regions in which we keep growing profitably.”