DAC Beachcroft (DACB) is expanding into Italy with the addition of a team of eight insurance lawyers from Italian firm ADVANT Nctm.

The incoming team include lead partner Anthony Perotto, former managing partner and London office head at ADVANT, and specialist insurance partners Guido Foglia and Michele Zucca. They are joined by five associates, and will be spread across DACB’s new Italian offices in Milan and Rome.

The team bring extensive experience advising insurers on coverage matters, liability litigation and arbitration and claims handling, as well as regulatory, compliance and policy development work.


David Pollitt, DACB’s managing partner, said: “Italy is absolutely key to our insurer clients, but for us as a business, it is so much more. Whilst we are seizing the opportunity to expand and diversify our existing offering to our main insurance clients in Europe, we are also adding new advisory and corporate regulatory capabilities in a key European jurisdiction.”

Perotto was admitted to the Bar of Milan in 1995 and specialises in litigation and arbitration in the insurance and reinsurance markets. Foglia spent more than 15 years at NCTM, having had earlier spells as an associate at local firms Traverso & Associati and Studio Legale Sinibaldi. Zucca joins DACB after 21 years at NCTM.

Perotto said: “Guido, Michele and I have worked closely with a number of highly experienced lawyers at DACB and we have the greatest respect for them and for the excellent service they provide to their clients in the global insurance market. We are confident that by joining forces with DACB, we will be even better able to meet the increasingly complex and international needs of our clients.”

The Italy expansion adds to the London-based firm’s existing European offices in France, Spain, Ireland and Germany. Last summer the firm signed a cooperation agreement to expand its relationship with German partner firm BLD Bach Langheid Dallmayr, with whom it founded the Legalign Global alliance.

Helen Faulkner, head of insurance at DACB, said: “Europe is a key area of focus for us. Insurers and their policyholders are demanding more and more support to manage their international risks. With our existing offices in the UK, Ireland, Spain and France, and our recent expansion into Germany and now Italy, we can better meet these demands for European support.”

The departure is a setback for ADVANT, the exclusive alliance of European law firms launched in September 2021. Along with along with Beiten Burkhardt in Munich and Altana in Paris, Nctm is a founding member of the grouping which operates under the umbrella of a Swiss verein. 

Elsewhere in Europe, top 20 UK firm Taylor Wessing is currently in talks with Spanish firm ECIJA about a possible strategic alliance that would expand the UK firm’s footprint in Spain and Portugal, as well as Latin America.

At the end of last month, Dentons said it plans to close its Barcelona office in April, with the firm moving the Barcelona team to its Madrid base.