Shepherd and Wedderburn poaches top City lawyer

Published on Saturday 12 April 2008 15:07

SHEPHERD and Wedderburn, the legal firm, has poached a top London corporate lawyer in one of the biggest swoops on the City this year.

Steven Turnbull has been a senior corporate partner at Linklaters for 32 years and joins Shepherd & Wedderburn's London office next month.

He has been involved in a number of high-profile deals with Linklaters' clients, which include Arm Holdings, Electric Private Equity, Flemings, MEPC, Orange and Siebe/Invensys.

In his new post he will also be responsible for the development of knowledge management, in which he has been involved at Linklaters for 20 years. Greater know-how and training capability allows law firms to work more cost-effectively for clients.

Turnbull's appointment is seen as a big catch for Shepherd and Wedderburn, which has offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen and opened its London office in 2000, seeing it grow considerably. The corporate team has acted in more than 60 flotations or secondary issues in the past three years, and last year the value of corporate finance deals hit 18.7bn.

Patrick Andrews, chief executive, said Turnbull, 55, would be a valuable addition to the team. "He has an outstanding reputation in the market," he said.

The firm has enjoyed a close working relationship with Linklaters for many years and they have collaborated on a number of deals, including the 11.6bn takeover of ScottishPower by Iberdrola and the 595m acquisition of Whyte & Mackay by UB Group.

David Cheyne, senior partner at Linklaters, said: "Steven will significantly increase the number of opportunities for the two firms to work together."