International disputes specialist Enyo Law has set out plans to install a new leadership team when founding partners Simon Twigden and Pietro Marino retire from day-to-day practice next spring.

The London-based firm will see George Maling elevated to senior partner and Edward Allen appointed managing partner, effective from the start of May next year. Twigden and Marino, who set up Enyo in 2010, will remain as consultants.

In a joint statement, Maling and Allen said: “Eleven years ago Simon and Pietro had the vision and courage to establish a conflict-free law firm dedicated solely to complex, high-value disputes. Since then, Enyo has become one of the largest and most respected disputes-only practices in London.”

They added: “We are incredibly grateful to Simon and Pietro for making Enyo the firm it is today and look forward to steering Enyo into the future with the same business model, high-performance culture and integrity as created by them.”

Enyo’s 17 partners and almost 40 other fee earners advise clients including multinational corporations, governments and high-net-worth individuals. The firm’s litigation team focuses on complex financial transactions, fraud, competition and energy, while its international arbitration lawyers represent clients under the rules of all the major arbitration institutions as well as ad hoc cases and those brought under UNCITRAL rules.   

Maling joined Enyo in 2012 from Nabarro, where he was a partner in its dispute resolution group for just shy of five years. Before that, he was a partner at now-defunct US firm Howrey for five years, having joined from Theodore Goddard prior to its merger with Addleshaw Booth & Co. Allen, meantime, has been at Enyo since the firm was launched in 2010 and became a partner two years later. Prior to that, he spent eight months at Addleshaw and more than six years as an associate at Dechert.

Both Marino and Twigden are Addleshaw alumni. Marino joined legacy firm Theodore Goddard as a trainee solicitor back in 1990, while Twigden joined in 1999 from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where he was a senior associate. Twigden later became head of Addleshaw’s litigation practice.

In a joint statement, Marino and Twigden said: “In 2010 we took a leap of faith in establishing Enyo. We saw the space in a congested London legal market for a bespoke disputes practice that could take on the quality work that so many firms had to decline for conflict reasons.”

They added: “Having taken the firm through its start-up and growth phase, and then seeing it truly established as a key player in the disputes market, now is the right time for us to move on.”

The firm has been growing steadily since it was created and in the past year has brought in partners Boris Telyatnikov from Taylor Wessing and international arbitration specialist Evgeniya Rubinina from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, both native Russian speakers with a mandate to expand the firm’s Former Soviet Union practice.

Enyo also has an in-house business intelligence team that identifies assets against which an award or judgment can be enforced, which it says is unique for a London law firm and allows it to avoid hiring costly external investigation firms, as well as provide clients with a better service from commencement to enforcement.

In other litigation news, City disputes firm Mishcon de Reya announced last month that it was set to go public in a move that could make it the most valuable London-listed law firm at around £750m. In the same week, the firm announced it had partnered with Harbour Litigation Funding to launch MDR Solutions I, a litigation fund that will see the parties allocate £150m to finance potential claims.