Global law firm Hogan Lovells announced that Katherine (Kathy) Vanderhook-Gomez has joined as a partner in the firm’s Global Regulatory & Intellectual Property, Media, and Technology (IPMT) practice in Washington, D.C.

Vanderhook-Gomez joins from 3M Company, where she served as Director and Assistant General Counsel in the Enterprise Risk Management group, advising on environmental compliance and enforcement matters, including those arising from the continuing and intense focus on PFAS.

Watson Farley & Williams is delighted to announce that leading energy experts Clarinda Tjia-Dharmadi and Merrick White recently joined the firm as partners in Singapore from McDermott, Will & Emery.

Eversheds Sutherland has strengthened its restructuring capabilities with the hire of Barney Smedley.

Barney, who joins the global law firm from DLA Piper, has a wealth of restructuring experience and is recognised for advising financial institutions, investors, insolvency practitioners and boards of directors on high value and high stakes restructuring and insolvency assignments. 

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright is expanding its Projects practice in Dubai with the appointment of new partner Prakruthi Gowda.

Prakruthi has extensive experience working on energy and infrastructure projects globally, including many first-of-a-kind projects in the energy transition space.

Kirkland & Ellis is excited to announce that debt finance lawyer Vanessa Xu will join the Firm as a partner.

Ms. Xu’s practice focuses on advising financial sponsors on complex cross-border leveraged finance transactions.

She has been recognized by the Legal 500 UK and Legal Week, which named her in its 40 Under 40 Rising Stars in Private Equity in 2019. Previously a partner at Allen & Overy, Ms. Xu is qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales and an attorney and counsellor-at-law in New York.

François-Guilhem Vaissier has joined as a partner in the Firm's Government Regulation Practice, along with a team of three associates and two trainees. This team has extensive experience in the energy, projects and infrastructure, and finance sectors—including in Africa, Europe, and on a global scale. It is the second notable group of lawyers that have recently joined Jones Day's Paris Office.

Holland & Knight welcomes Emmett Weindruch as a partner in the Intellectual Property Group in Charlotte. Most recently, Mr. Weindruch was a partner at Moore & Van Allen.

Mr. Weindruch's transactional practice focuses on preparing and negotiating intellectual property (IP) technology and commercial agreements, including software as a service (SaaS) agreements, patent and trademark licenses, joint developer agreements, software reseller agreements, cloud hosting agreements and a variety of supply chain, hosted solution and general commercial agreements.

King & Spalding announced that John Ryan has joined the firm as a partner in its Finance and Restructuring practice group. Ryan is based in the firm’s New York office.

Ryan, who joins the firm from Capital One, brings a broad-based skillset spanning leveraged finance, capital markets, project finance, derivatives, broker-dealer regulation and restructuring.  He has extensive experience in leveraged finance, including loan financings and securities financings such as high-yield bonds, mezzanine and equity/quasi-equity financing.

Continuing to expand in Germany, Morgan Lewis will welcome Daja Apetz-Dreier as a litigation partner resident in Munich. Daja served as managing partner of Reed Smith’s Munich office, where she has been a member of its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practice. At Morgan Lewis, she will continue her broad commercial litigation, financial services disputes, and international arbitration practice.

Global law firm White & Case LLP has expanded its Global Project Development and Finance Practice with the addition of Nadav Klugman as a partner in Chicago.