Covington nabs seven from O'Melveny

Covington & Burling has recruited Tim Clark and Loretta Shaw-Lorello to its New York office to build out the firm’s US private equity practice. Both Clark and Shaw-Lorello previously worked in the private equity practice of Los Angeles-based firm O’Melveny & Myers; Clark was the firm’s investment funds practice co-head.
The two are the first of seven attorneys from O’Melveny who will join the firm in the coming weeks. The remaining five will be counsel and associates; four will work out of the New York office and one will be stationed in Washington, DC to serve as a conduit for regulatory issues that might relate to the practice.
The moves will significantly strengthen Covington’s US-based investment funds team, which had previously been much smaller than the firm’s UK-based practice. Before the arrival of Clark and Shaw-Lorello, the US team comprised just one full-time partner and two part-time partners.
“Our focus will be filling out different geographies as well as adding ancillary pieces to the investment funds practice, to further expand our full-service practice that will focus on everything that our alternative asset clients might do,” says Clark.
Clark and Shaw-Lorello’s relationship with Covington goes back many years, Clark says; both had friends and colleagues who worked there, and both had been “great admirers” of the firm. Over the years, the two saw Covington’s private equity practice and their own developing in complimentary ways.
“What’s nice is that Covington, prior to us coming, did a lot of secondary and LP work, while we bring to the table a big GP sponsor representation side,” Clark says. “So it’s a natural fit between what we’re doing here in the US and what they’re doing in the US and out of London.”
The two are expected to bring with them approximately a dozen clients, said a spokeswoman for the firm, with current funds ranging in size from $100 million to more than $500 million. The New York Law Journal reports that Clark’s past clients have included CCMP Capital, Eos Capital Partners, Tishman Speye and JPMorgan Capital.
Both Clark and Shaw-Lorello were formerly partners at New York private equity law firm O’Sullivan, which O’Melveny acquired in 2002. Several former O’Sullivan attorneys have left O’Melveny in the past few years.