July 20, 2015

LOS ANGELES DAILY JOURNAL

By Banks Albach

Garth A. Osterman will jump to Cooley’s SF office while others will be posted in NY

SAN FRANCISCO – Cooley LLP snagged a tightly knit quartet of corporate partners from Reed Smith LLP on Friday.

Yvan-Claude Pierre, who departs Reed Smith’s New York branch as chair of the firm’s U.S. capital markets group, will join Cooley’s New York office along with Daniel I. Goldberg and William N. Haddad. Garth A. Osterman will transition to Cooley’s San Francisco office. Combined, the team carries an arsenal of deal making traits that have spanned several international markets. Pierre has worked on more than 250 capital market offerings and 150 mergers and acquisitions. Goldberg has extensive experience advising public and private companies on securities compliance and corporate governance. And Haddad and Osterman both bring a list of clients in venture capital and private equity.

Last month, Pierre brought two companies – medical device firm Glaukos Corp. and Ritter Pharmaceuticals Inc. – public on the same day.

The move is the latest in a successful run for Cooley’s corporate practice. Since 2013, the firm has brought in 25 corporate group partners from rival firms.

Because the attorneys had not yet been released from Reed Smith last week, they declined to comment for this article.

After nearly a year of negotiations, Cooley CEO Joe Conroy said the move was a “huge win” for his firm and a targeted effort to expand Cooley’s technology, life sciences and health care practice in New York.

“We consider this a coup,” Conroy said. “These were highly sought-after attorneys. To have a preeminent group of lawyers with sizable practices in this space in New York and San Francisco is a big ticket.”

The quartet also moved as a group to Reed Smith’s capital markets practice from DLA Piper in 2011.

“Pierre was always clear that if he were to move over to Cooley, he would do so only with his team,” Conroy said.

Lateral moves as a team are quite common when attorneys find consistency and success together, said Larry Watanabe, a legal recruiter with Solano Beach-based Watanabe Nason LLC. A team move also “greatly enhances” the likelihood of their clients moving with them to the new firm, he said.

“Cooley has been doing very well lately,” Watanabe said. “This is a big upstream move for these attorneys.”