Squire Patton Boggs is opening an office in Amsterdam with partners hired from Van Doorne and Taylor Wessing as it continues to target European private equity work. 

The new office is set to open this autumn and will be led by managing partner Jeroen Sombezki, who is joining from Dutch firm Van Doorne where he is a corporate partner. 

The office – the US firm’s 16th European location – will initially focus on corporate transactional matters with a concentration of private equity work. Its launch continues a private equity growth push that has seen Squire open an office in Dublin and add practitioners in Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan and Paris. 

Also joining for the Amsterdam launch is Selma Baouch, currently a corporate and M&A partner at Taylor Wessing with focus on investment-driven transactions, and a team of two associates. 

“We have made strong progress in expanding our pan-European private equity practice,” said EMEA managing partner Jonathan Jones. “The Netherlands’ growing private equity scene and continued emergence as a foreign direct investment hub for global corporates and investors made this a logical step in our strategy.”

He added: “Jeroen and Selma are international practitioners who are well-connected into the Dutch market. We are delighted to welcome them to the global team.”

Sombezki is joining SPB after eight years at Van Doorne, before which he practised at Dutch firm Stibbe. He advises clients on M&A, private equity transactions, private placements and growth financing, joint ventures and other strategic collaborations, as well as corporate governance and equity capital markets matters. He focuses on international mid-market transactional matters, most notably in the technology, media and telecom, and energy and infrastructure sectors.

Meantime, Baouch brings experience in corporate and M&A transactions, especially in the field of private equity transactions, with focus on healthtech, technology and life sciences sectors. She joined Taylor Wessing in 2020 from leading Benelux firm AKD and currently serves as vice president of the European American Chamber of Commerce (Netherlands).

Steve Mahon, Squire’s global managing partner for clients and strategy, commented: “The Netherlands is a well-established commercial market that has continued to flourish post-Brexit. Our Amsterdam office will open new opportunities for us to support our clients who are already doing business and planning investments across several key areas of our global practice, including private equity, tech, life sciences and industrials.”

Squire opened its Dublin office in May, a move firm chair and CEO Mark Ruehlmann described as a “milestone” in the firm’s international expansion. It hired Dennis Agnew, a founding partner of Pinsent Masons’ Dublin office who specialises in cross-border M&A for both industry and private equity, late last year to lead the office. 

Late last year the firm also boosted its private equity offering in Germany with the hire of corporate partner Sascha Konwalski in Frankfurt from Linklaters and in Madrid added senior private equity partner Carlos Blanco Morillo along with a team of three associates from Spanish independent RocaJunyent. 

Earlier in the year, the firm also boosted its private equity offering in Milan and Paris with the hire of partners Sara Belotti and Arnaud Lafarge from Baker McKenzie and Lamy Lexel respectively. 

Squire is among a number of US firms that have been targeting the European private equity market in recent months. They include Boston-based Goodwin Procter, which opened an office in Munich last year as part of an ongoing recruitment drive. 

And earlier this year McDermott Will & Emery made a twin partner hire from Noerr and Latham & Watkins to boost its German private equity practice.