Der rolling stone

Last month, Dr Geza Toth-Feher announced plans to launch his own firm after building up the German practice group for Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker. While hardly the first attorney to hang out his own shingle, Toth-Feher has taken a circuitous route to practicing the law on his own.
Toth-Feher studied law and economics in Germany, beginning his career as a corporate attorney in the early 1990s with an international law firm based in Hamburg. He eventually became a partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, though he left the firm to found Dewey Ballantine’s German operation in 2002.
By 2004, however, he left the legal profession entirely, to found CB Equity Partners, an advisory firm boasting a marriage of stars from Germany’s legal and banking worlds. After serving as a principal with the firm for a little over a year, Toth-Feher returned to practicing law, this time with Paul Hastings. The appointment in 2005 was widely viewed as the firm’s first step in building a German presence.
Paul Hastings gave him the task of building a small cadre of German attorneys in London to serve as the nucleus for an eventual office in Munich. However two years later, Toth-Feher announced plans to found Toth-Feher & Partner LLP. He also convinced three of his associates at Paul Hastings, Robert Abt, Oliver Beyer and Melanie Schuman to join the new venture as well.
Toth-Feher stressed the exit of the firm’s entire German practice group was an amicable one. His independent shop was established as an English partnership and will specialize in providing private equity counsel in both London and Germany to Paul Hastings clients and their own, which at this point includes the investment bank Macquarie. Coincidentally, his former private equity firm, CB Equity Partners, touts two Macquarie transactions on its web site.
This may not be such a coincidence as his new firm is funded by a €2 million line of credit from CB Equity Partners. Toth-Feher described the funding to the Lawyer.com as “similar to a loan, but with certain profitsharing instruments.” The instrument is likely yet another creative solution for an attorney following no precedent in shaping his career.