Hogan Lovells has hired a 23-lawyer M&A and finance team from Orrick in Italy led by former managing partner for Europe, Patrizio Messina.  

Alongside Messina the team includes partners Annalisa Dentoni-Litta, Madeleine Horrocks, Alessandro Accrocca, Paola Barometro and Sabrina Setini, three counsel, senior associates and associates.  

The team will join in Milan and Rome alongside trainees and business services staff, with the group including more than 30 people in total. The team focuses on structured finance, debt capital markets and M&A matters and advises clients on both English and Italian law. 

“This exciting growth for our Italy practice is part of our firm’s focused growth strategy,” said Hogan Lovells CEO, Miguel Zaldivar. “We now have a top tier debt capital markets and securitisation practice in Italy, a key market for our clients. As the third largest economy in the EU, Italy is seeing substantial growth, particularly in highly-regulated sectors such as renewables, pharma, financial institutions and tech and telecoms.” 

Rome-based Messina has joined Hogan Lovells after 20 years in leadership roles at Orrick, including head of the Italy banking and finance team and serving as a member of the firm’s global management committee.  

Dual qualified in England and Wales and Italy, Messina has extensive experience in debt capital markets transactions and is consistently ranked as one of Italy’s leading securitisation and structured finance lawyers. He has helped to draft legislation relating to securitisation and minibonds in Italy, and his finance team works with most of the minibond issuers in the Italian market. At Orrick he also worked with the M&A team on major Italian bank rescue and relaunch transactions.  

At Hogan Lovells Messina will succeed Luca Picone as managing partner for Italy and will work alongside newly-appointed deputy managing partner Vittorio Moresco, who heads the firm’s Italy employment practice.  

For his part Picone is standing down after seven years at the helm of the firm’s Italian practice and will continue to work closely with Messina and Moresco, Hogan Lovells said.  

The team’s move sees Orrick lose more than one third of its entire team in Italy, where it previously had 67 lawyers according to Pirical, including more than 30 in its corporate/M&A team.  

The group’s arrival at Hogan Lovells brings the firm’s Italy lawyer headcount to more than 160 across offices in Rome and Milan, including 26 partners. The firm said its Italy practice had been growing steadily in recent years, with a constant average double-digit growth in terms of revenues year-on-year, and had turnover of almost €50m in 2023.  

The hire follows Hogan Lovells bolstering its Paris ranks in January with the hire of a five-lawyer disputes team from White & Case, just a few months after it strengthened its infrastructure and energy offering in Berlin with the hire of a pair of M&A specialists and their team from Dentons.

In October the firm also snapped up more than 30 partners from Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in the US, shortly ahead of the latter dissolving in December.