Cooley has hired a trio of partners from Taylor Wessing, Goodwin Procter and White & Case to bolster its emerging companies and venture capital (ECVC) offering in London. 

The 1,300-lawyer West Coast firm has recruited Angus Miln, Ali Ramadan and Helen Pantelides, all of whom will join the ECVC practice. The hires come just a few months after Cooley’s former London managing partner, Justin Stock, left at the head of a three-partner transactions team to join Akin. 

Miln has joined Cooley after almost eight years at Taylor Wessing, where he led the ECVC practice and advised clients including Vinted, Gousto and Farfetch on fundraising rounds. Earlier he worked at Bird & Bird, where he made partner in 2008, and also practised at Latham & Watkins and Simmons & Simmons. 

Meantime Ramadan has spent the past five years as a partner at Goodwin Procter, before which he had a brief stint at Orrick and overlapped with Miln at Bird & Bird, where he made partner in 2016. 

Pantelides also previously worked with Miln at Taylor Wessing, before leaving to join White & Case in 2019. She made partner at the firm at the start of last year.  

The trio represent companies throughout their life cycles, including formation, ongoing counselling, financings and scaling towards M&A and liquidity transactions, Cooley said in a statement. 

Claire Keast-Butler, co-partner in charge at Cooley in London, said the trio’s experience and market connectivity were “a perfect fit” for the firm. 

“We’re excited about the huge opportunity our expanded ECVC practice in London will bring to the wider firm and our clients as we continue to execute on our growth strategy,” she added. 

Keast-Butler, who heads Cooley’s UK capital markets practice, was made London co-head last month alongside UK disputes head James Maton following Stock’s exit. Maton and Stock were both founding partners of Cooley’s London office in 2015, when the firm recruited partners from rivals including Morrison & Foerster and legacy Edwards Wildman Palmer to launch a 55-lawyer UK practice. 

Sine then the London practice has grown to 30 partners and around 65 associates and counsel according to Cooley’s website. Keast-Butler joined in 2019 from Latham & Watkins. 

“The addition of these new partners confirms Cooley as the go-to destination in London for high-growth, innovative businesses and their investors, as the firm has been for decades in the US,” said Cooley CEO Rachel Proffitt. “London continues to see a significant increase in the deployment of capital from US and other international investors, and its increasingly well-established ecosystem is producing some of the world’s most exciting, disruptive businesses. We look forward to accelerating our growth in the London market.”

Proffitt took over as CEO at the start of this year from veteran leader Joe Conroy, who had served in the role since 2008 and has continued as chairman. Conroy has been closely associated with Cooley’s expansion from its roots as a Silicon Valley firm to a leading tech-focused US firm with a substantial network of international offices; during his tenure the firm more than doubled its headcount and grew its revenue from less than $500m to $2bn.