Squire Patton Boggs has continued to invest in the Australia market with the hiring of two energy partners from Norton Rose Fulbright in Australia.

Natalie Lonergan and Tatiana Gotvig join the firm’s energy and natural resources practice in Sydney and will be accompanied by a team of associates. The pair’s arrival takes the number of new partners on the firm’s Australian roster to nine over the past 18 months.

Lisa Henneberry, Squire’s energy and natural resources practice group leader, said: “The addition of Natalie and Tatiana adds important development and energy commodity expertise and experience to the Asia Pacific region and complements the depth of our existing global team.”

Lonergan brings with her more than 25 years of experience advising on energy transactions and projects, from exploration and production to transportation and storage. She arrives after three years at NRF, having previously worked for Herbert Smith Freehills. For the past 28 years she has also been a specialist reserve legal officer in the Royal Australian Air Force.

Gotvig, meantime, brings two decades of international energy and infrastructure experience across gas, LNG and other energy projects in Asia Pacific, having also worked in-house at a number of international energy companies and on the energy desks of financial institutions in Vietnam, Hong Kong and Australia.

Their appointment follows the arrival a day earlier of former Weil Gotshal & Manges financial institutions regulatory practice head Derrick Cephas in New York. 

Jim Barresi, head of Squire’s global financial services practice, said: “Derrick brings a history of extraordinary achievement in private practice, as a regulator and as a bank executive. His experience and technical skills will help our existing financial regulatory team continue to provide clients with practical and solution-oriented service.”

Cephas had been at Weil since 2011, prior to which he was president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank in New York. He also served as the superintendent for the New York State Banking Department back in the early 1990s. He specialises in regulatory and transactional matters.

Cephas said: “Squire Patton Boggs has an extensive international presence and a team of experienced financial services lawyers that will serve as an excellent platform to support my clients and further business development efforts. I am excited to join this talented global team and play a part in its continued development in New York and elsewhere.”

In November, the firm hired Islamic finance expert Ahmed Butt as a partner in its Saudi Arabia financial services practice from Simmons & Simmons - the hire followed the transfer to US rival Crowell & Moring in September of its 13-lawyer Qatar office, made up of infrastructure specialists, when it said it would channel its investment into its other Middle East bases in in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. 

In September, King & Spalding boosted its Asia Pacific energy practice with the hire in Singapore of two senior lawyers – Anthony Patten and Lachlan Clancy – as partners from Shearman & Sterling.