Rising Bankruptcy Bar Star Quits Mayer Brown for Orrick
The co-chair of Mayer Brown’s financial restructuring and bankruptcy practice group is leaving the firm, effective immediately, to join Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe.
Raniero “Ron” D’Aversa Jr., 44, will be based in Orrick’s office in New York. Sources say that he will be joined there by several associates, reports the Am Law Daily.
“We had been pursuing Ron off and on for probably a year, and a lot of his clients are the same kinds that we have, particularly in finance,” Roger Frankel, who chairs Orrick’s creditors’ rights and bankruptcy group, tells the legal publication. “It’s clear that there will be significant clients moving with him, and we think with [Ron] we’ll be able to broaden that to do work for them in the creditors’ rights and restructuring areas.”
He is a 1990 graduate of New York University School of Law, notes an Orrick press release.
The move underlines the rise of the approximately 1,000-attorney Orrick firm while Mayer Brown struggles to stabilize under new leadership, the Am Law Daily article says. The firm’s longtime chairman, partner Tyrone Fahner, stepped down from this leadership role last year, as he neared 65.
Mayer Brown wished D’Aversa well in his future endeavors, the article notes. “But D’Aversa’s departure caps a tough past year and a half for Mayer. The 1,423-lawyer firm famously de-equitized 45 partners in March 2007 and subsequently underwent a controversial management change as key partners fled the firm.”
Earlier coverage:
Legal Times (2007): “In a Time of Transition, Mayer Brown Looks to Its Trio of Leaders”
