MoFo boosts City restructuring team with Schulte Roth duo

Declercq and Van de Graaff have joined the firm’s business restructuring and insolvency group, which is described as one of MoFo’s “core practice areas” along with M&A and data privacy. 

The pair were previously partners at US funds and financial services specialist Schulte Roth & Zabel, which they both joined in April 2013 from Brown Rudnick. 

They regularly represent distressed investors in restructuring matters, with Van de Graaff currently representing one of the members of the senior creditor group in the Lehman Brothers Waterfall application in the High Court. She is now moving this matter across to MoFo. 

“We bring a creditor perspective and cross-border expertise,” said Declercq. “Being here will present opportunities and we’re set up to compete for global restructurings.” 

Van de Graaff added: “We have a broader mandate than just distressed investors, because we also advise on the corporate client side by counselling board members.” 

MoFo has made several key hires in the past year to boost its key practice areas, including a data protection pair from De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek in Berlin and Latham & Watkins duo Graeme Sloan and Vladimir Maly. 

It also recruited New York-based James Peck as global co-chair of the firm’s business restructuring and insolvency group last year, which was one of the main draws for Declercq and Van de Graaff. Peck is a former bankruptcy judge who presided over the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and has since looked to develop MoFo’s cross-border practice across Asia, the US and Europe. 

“Our core strategy for Europe concerns expansion in our best of class areas, and restructuring is one of these strengths,” said MoFo’s managing partner for Europe Paul Friedman. “We’d been looking for a long time to build our restructuring team here and we’re not done with expanding it.”

He said the next area of growth would be in the patent litigation team, with hires expected in the UK and Germany.