Top 25 US law firm Goodwin Procter has grown its private equity team in Germany again with the hire of partner Florian Hirschmann from Reed Smith in Munich. 

Hirschmann joins the firm eight months after it entered the southern German city with the hire of partner Jan Schinköth from Sidley Austin along with an associate in a bid to further its reach in a European hub for private equity.  

Like Schinköth, Hirschmann will be resident in Munich on a remote basis. He brings more than 15 years of experience advising clients in cross-border private equity, M&A and venture capital transactions to his new firm and has particular expertise in German-Chinese investments. He spent four years as a partner in the Munich office of DLA Piper before joining Reed Smith in 2018 and earlier was also a partner in Munich at White & Case. 

Erik Dahl, a London-based partner in Goodwin’s private equity practice, said that Hirschmann's experience working with private equity investment managers domestically and on complex cross-border transactions made him "an excellent fit and the ideal complement to our existing team."

Dahl himself joined Goodwin in September 2020 at the helm of a five-partner team of private equity specialists from Sidley Austin, where he had been Munich managing partner and co-leader of the global private equity practice.

Goodwin now boasts more than 150 private equity lawyers in Europe across its London, Frankfurt, Paris and Luxembourg offices. Since setting up shop in Frankfurt in 2016, the firm’s German team has grown to more than 40 lawyers working across the private equity, real estate, technology and financial service industries. 

"Florian is the latest renowned market leader to join our Germany team and underscores our commitment to be the leading firm in the industry verticals in which our clients operate," said Stephan Kock, chair of Goodwin’s Frankfurt office. 

“We look forward to working with Florian as we continue to partner with clients to shape their success and advance Goodwin’s capital-meets-innovation strategy,” he added. 

Another US firm to boost its offering in Munich at a busy time for private equity recruitment is Kirkland & Ellis, which added Dr Hendrik Braun as a partner last October from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. The move came just a week after Kirkland hired two of Freshfields’ private equity rising stars, partners Vincent Bergin and Keir MacLennan, in London.

And last week, a group of senior French lawyers with experience working at international firms announced they had established their own private equity-focused law firm in Paris in a bid to target France’s ongoing mid-market private equity and M&A deal making boom.