Kirkland & Ellis has bolstered its new office in Frankfurt with the hire of a pair of restructuring specialists from Gleiss Lutz. 

Partner Christian Halàsz has joined Kirkland alongside Friedrich Schlott, who has joined as a partner having been a counsel at Gleiss Lutz. The duo will be based in Munich and the Frankfurt office Kirkland announced earlier this month, restocking the firm’s Germany restructuring bench following the exit of partner Marlene Ruf for Milbank in April.

“Christian and Friedrich bring decades of experience to our restructuring practice,” said Jon Ballis, chairman of Kirkland’s executive committee. “As we continue investing in the areas that matter most to our clients, we’re excited to welcome preeminent lawyers like Christian and Friedrich to our German team.”

Halàsz has joined Kirkland after two and a half years at Gleiss Lutz, before which he was a partner at Akin and Bingham McCutchen. His practice focuses on cross-border and domestic financial restructurings, workouts, insolvency and multijurisdictional collateral enforcement for clients including hedge funds, bondholders, institutional lenders and secondary market investors as well as creditor committees and domestic and international companies. 

Meantime Schlott has extensive experience in restructuring, insolvency-related corporate law and insolvency law, including in-court and out-of-court restructuring, and regularly advises stakeholders across the capital structure. Before joining Gleiss Lutz in 2017 he practised at Taylor Wessing and Weil. 

The duo’s hire follows Kirkland adding senior corporate partner Tobias Larisch from Latham & Watkins earlier this month for its Frankfurt office, its second in Germany after the roughly 50-lawyer Munich office it launched in 2004. Kirkland also bolstered its restructuring bench in Munich last year with the hire of partner Cristina Weidner from Clifford Chance. 

Germany has been an active market for US law firms since the start of the year, the number of partners at top 100 firms having grown by 7%, according to publicly available data tracked by Pirical.

In June Wall Street firm Willkie Farr continued its “steady growth” strategy in Germany with the hire of an 11-lawyer restructuring team from Latham & Watkins led by top flight partners Jörn Kowalewski and Ulrich Klockenbrink, having opened its second Germany office in Munich earlier in the year. 

Gleiss Lutz declined to comment on the departures.