Allen & Overy expanded its global finance practice with the hiring of a team of five New York leveraged finance partners.

The team is led by senior leveraged finance partner Scott M. Zemser and includes dual qualified partner Alan Rockwell and partners Rajani Gupta, Judah Frogel and Todd Koretzky. Zemser, Rockwell and Frogel are joining from White & Case, Gupta is joining from Proskauer Rose and Koretzky is joining from Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy.

The team’s leading U.S. domestic and international finance practice represents banks and other financial institutions as lead arrangers, underwriters and participants across all types of financings and also advises clients on complex debt restructurings and workouts. The team’s key clients include major industry players (and existing institutional clients of the firm) such as Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.

The new partners have extensive U.S. domestic, as well as cross-border and international, banking and leveraged finance experience and will considerably strengthen the firm’s ability to serve clients seamlessly across all major financial markets and provide a robust “one-stop shop” for their U.S. law and English law leveraged finance transactions and other banking needs.

Philip Bowden, A&O’s global co-head of Banking commented, “The U.S. and European leveraged finance markets have changed significantly over the past few years. They are no longer completely independent markets with separate pools of liquidity, but are increasingly used to finance both domestic transactions and deals outside of their home market. The addition of this highly experienced team of U.S. lawyers, led by Scott Zemser who has over 25 years of U.S. and international leveraged finance experience, greatly enhances our ability to support clients globally regardless of the type of law or place of origin of their financing transactions.”