Yvette Ostolaza, chair of Sidley’s management committee, is chipper as ever as she logs on to a Zoom call to discuss the firm’s newest elite team hire at Sidley’s London office. Her familiar cheerful voice booms brightly on the line, flitting energetically from hellos and chit-chat straight to business and figures. Joining her on the call are Sidley London head Tom Thesing and Ed Gander, the former head of private funds at Weil, Gotshal & Manges who moved to take on the same role at Sidley six months prior. The mood is optimistic because the call marks the arrival of the two remaining Weil, Gotshal & Manges partners at Sidley’s London office—Stephen Fox and Peter Boulle—from the ambitious raid the firm made Weil’s funds team. The firm's rapid growth in London has made numerous industry headlines in the last two years. "We’ve made no secret that one of our strategic imperatives was to grow our fund space, in part in London, in part in the U.S.,” Ostolaza said. For Sidley, Gander, Boulle, and Fox were perfect candidates to fill this gap. With almost 20%, nine in total, of the current Sidley London partners office being made up of ex-Weil alumni—the firm added private equity infrastructure duo James MacArthur and Ed Freeman from Weil in 2023 and the firm’s head of litigation Matt Shankland and global co-head of structured finance Rupert Wall also had stints at Weil—the move was appealing to both sides. "It was an easy process of diligence of the quality of his work and his cultural fit with the Sidley platform. We share overlapping clients, and we know this team from other partners,” Ostolaza said. Likewise, Gander adds: “I was fortunate in that I know a lot of the partners already here within the office, everyone's made me feel very welcome.” Déjà Vu

If this ambitious team play feels like déjà vu, that’s because it is. This latest hire comes almost a year after Sidley began a calculated raid on Latham & Watkins, initially adding the firm’s leveraged finance team—headed by Jay Sadanandan and Sam Hamilton. From those hires, Sidley has added 10 finance partners from Latham, with a source telling Law.com earlier this year that the overall Latham lawyer figure is now 40. In this context, Sidley’s move into the funds sector can be seen as a continuation of its strategy to attract established teams from competitors. This time around, the firm has fulfilled its ambitions for the funds sector by swooping for another established team. Weil retained Boulle and Fox for as long as possible—a tactic sometimes used to disrupt departing partners’ books. But Gander said that hasn’t been an issue. “We've hit the ground running already and we've been very busy. We've got mutual clients and also new clients joining our platformon a weekly basis at the moment.” The funds team at Sidley currently stands at six partners, and they are hoping to add "depth and breadth to the bench" in due course. Sidley Scale

Beyond familiarity, Gander says that the Sidley platform offered a scale necessary for the funds market. “It became obvious to me and my colleagues who are transitioning across, as it is to all investment fund lawyers, that the private markets are consolidating. Funds are getting bigger, and many investment firms are not single product shops anymore—they're trying to offer a whole range of different funds, within the same house, and that's really what attracted me to Sidley's platform, amongst a number of other things.” “It’s got a huge networks and there’s lots of crossover with clients and so bringing the two together made a lot of sense,” he added. Sidley’s London office—now its fourth largest globally—has grown headcount by 30% in five years and revenues by 60% since 2020. “London is a cornerstone of our cross-border business,” Ostolaza said. “It’s where global capital converges, and our clients want seamless service across the US, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.” And despite this consistent slew of high-profile hires—London head Thesing counts 10 last year, and five this year in London alone—the firm is still in growth mode, with Thesing adding: “It's a bit crystal ball gazing but I would say yes, we will continue to grow in London both organically and through accretive additions."