Paul Hastings has boosted its London finance team with the hire of partner Reena Gogna from Weil Gotshal & Manges, according to a source with knowledge of the move. 

Gogna is set to imminently join the 1,200-lawyer firm after a decade at Weil, before which she was a partner at Latham & Watkins. 

Gogna represents financial institutions and direct lenders on leveraged finance, senior debt and high-yield financings, debt restructurings and refinancings. She has worked with the likes of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, both clients of Paul Hastings’, as well as Permira Credit and Ares Credit. She also represents KKR Credit, where Paul Hastings’ European restructuring co-chair, William Needham, was a managing director before joining the firm in February. 

Gogna’s hire will reunite her with former Weil and Latham colleagues Paul Hastings has hired as part of its efforts to place itself as a global market leader in finance and debt capital markets. 

The firm hit Weil’s London lender-side finance practice in late 2022 for partners Patrick Bright and Alex Horstmann-Caines, having hired a four-partner finance team from Latham in London earlier in the year that included Latham’s former global banking co-chair, Ross Anderson, and Mo Nurmohamed and Karan Chopra, the former co-chairs of its London finance department. 

Over the past year the firm has added more than 30 partners to its global banking and finance practice, which has grown to 260 lawyers according to data from Pirical. Most of those hires have been in the US, including an eight-partner team in Texas from Vinson & Elkins, a trio of partners from Cahill Gordon & Reindel in New York and, most recently, an 11-partner private credit and restructuring team from King & Spalding. 

The ambitious hiring strategy appears to be paying off, with the firm growing revenue nearly 9% last year to a record $1.8bn as rising demand saw it shrug off the post-2021 hangover that has affected its rivals. 

For her part Gogna is now poised to contribute to the growth of Paul Hastings’ London office, which has more than doubled revenue and lawyer headcount in the past five years to around 170 lawyers, according to the firm’s website. The firm doesn’t publish financial data for the London office, though GLP understands it had a record first quarter.  

Recent hires for Paul Hastings in London include former SFO banking fraud division head Stuart Alford KC, who joined from Latham in February alongside partner Oliver Browne to boost its investigations and litigation bench. 

The firm has also had partner departures in London recently, including Adrian Chiodo, who exited to be head of European leveraged finance at Covington & Burling in March less than three years after joining from Latham. Shortly after structured finance specialist Blake Jones moved over to Clifford Chance and in May Luke McDougall, a co-chair of the firm’s global finance practice, defected to Davis Polk.