Shearman & Sterling stayed close to home in its latest partner promotions round with nine of the 12 spots going to lawyers in the US. 

The US focus marks a pivot from the New York firm’s round last year, when nine of the 14 promotions were made across its international network following a six-month delay. The latest promotions arrive a year after the delayed round was unveiled last June. 

Four of the new partners are women (33%), representing a slight dip on last year when six of the 14 made up were women, or 42% of the total. 

Five of this year’s successful candidates are based in New York: Lorenz Haselberger (tax), Erika Kent (capital markets), Jonathan Newman (real estate), Sara Raisner (litigation) and Augusto Ruiloba (project development and finance). 

The promotions follow projects and infrastructure partners Robert Freedman, Alexandro Padres and Gregory Tan leaving Shearman’s New York office last month to head down Park Avenue to Paul Hastings, where Tan and Padres became the rival firm’s infrastructure and energy practice co-chairs. 

The rest of the US promotions were awarded to capital markets lawyer Yian Huang in Menlo Park, antitrust and commercial litigator Rachel Mossman in Dallas, international arbitration specialist Jesse Sherrett in Washington DC and tech expert Cassandra Cuellar in Austin. 

Two lawyers were promoted in the Middle East – David Hume (arbitration) and Samuel Ogunlaja (project development and finance) both moved up in Abu Dhabi. The final spot went to Sam Whitaker (compensation, governance and ERISA) in London. 

David Beveridge, Shearman’s senior partner, said the latest roster’s election was “key to the continued execution of our strategy to strengthen our core practices with the greatest potential for the firm, aligning with market opportunities”. 

Despite skipping over its continental European network this year, Shearman has made a handful of significant lateral moves in the region, including the arrival of a four-strong team of partners in Paris in October from DLA Piper. The group, which was led by Xavier Norlain, DLA Piper’s former co-managing partner in France, specialise in advising financial services clients on M&A, private equity, leveraged finance and restructuring matters. 

The promotions follow a stellar set of financial results for Shearman, which in March reported an 18% increase in revenue to $1.01bn as profit per equity partner (PEP) leapt up 58% to just over $3m. 

Shearman's jump in PEP came off the back of a 23% decline the previous year when revenue also fell, by 11%, making it one of the few top 100 firms not to record positive growth. But the latest results more than made up for those declines.