SJ Berwin completes Euro coverage

SJ Berwin will have completed the gap in its European private equity offering when its Paris office is opened in the coming weeks. 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 un-doubtedly the doyen of the private equity market in Paris,” 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 favour of opening a Munich office for SJ Berwin. SJ Berwin now has offices in London, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Madrid, Brussels and Paris.

Pinkham, Vansteenkiste and Jean 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 these are, when required, initially served from London.