Alston & Bird has hired a three-lawyer team from Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft to strengthen its structured finance offering.

Partners Joseph Gambino and Peter Williams, and associate Elizabeth Walker, will join the firm in New York where they will advise clients on transactional and regulatory matters related to collateralised loan obligations (CLOs) and other structured and credit-linked products.

Shanell Cramer, partner and co-head of the firm’s finance group, said: “Joe and Pete are CLO all-stars who have worked in a first-chair capacity for an A-list of Wall Street banks and other global financial institutions.”

Cramer reunites with Gambino and Williams having also previously been an attorney at Cadwalader before joining Alston & Bird in 2011.

She added that the pair are “outstanding attorneys whose talent and reputation reinforce the support we offer our structured finance clients and further position us as a top destination for highly innovative and complex transactions”. 

Gambino brings with him more than two decades of experience working in structured credit, including two stints at Cadwalader that bookended a career in finance, including four years at Merrill Lynch, almost two years at FSI Capital and six years at Stifel. Williams, meantime, spent just over 17 years at Cadwalader, having started his career as an equity trader at Fidelity Investments.

James Sullivan, partner in charge of Alston & Bird’s New York office, said: “Joe and Pete serve an elite group of leading national and global financial institutions that in many instances are also our clients. Their arrival fills a strong client need for sophisticated CLO expertise and reinforces our commitment to add top talent to meet client demand not only in structured and warehouse finance but also related areas such as corporate debt, commercial real estate lending, and other finance and transactional services where we have market-leading practices.”

In August, Alston & Bird took on another partner from Cadwalader in New York: veteran technology lawyer Vivian Maese.

Earlier this year the firm also expanded its London finance practice with the additions of partner James Fisher from Reed Smith in March, followed by partner Paul Morris from Norton Rose Fulbright in August. The firm opened its London office, focused on its finance practice, in September last year.