SJ Berwin Completes European Coverage –

PARIS – SJ Berwin has completed the gap in its European private equity offering by recently opening its Paris office. The law firm has chosen to hire George Pinkham and Sylvie Vansteenkiste from Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbroon. Pinkham, a private equity lawyer, and Vansteenkiste, a tax lawyer, will be joined by Jean Goncalves who is an in-house tax lawyer at GE Medical Systems Europe. Goncalves previously worked with Pinkham and Vansteenkiste at Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbroon.

“George Pinkham and his team are very well known to our private equity practice…and have worked with them for a very long time. George is undoubtedly a leader in the Parisian private equity market,” said Jonathan Blake, head of private equity at SJ Berwin.

Blake is keen on recruiting individuals with whom he and SJ Berwin have developed relationships over time. At the end of last year, he announced that he had persuaded Uwe Steininger and four of his team members to leave Baker & McKenzie in favor of opening a Munich, Germany office for SJ Berwin. SJ Berwin now has offices in London, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Madrid, Brussels and Paris.

Pinkham, Vansteenkiste and Goncalves will be joined by a team that focuses on M&A transactional work. This will bring the total in the office to 15. SJ Berwin has stated its intention to build a continental European presence around the core competencies of private equity and tax. Complementary services are then added to these but are, when required, initially served from London.