Holland & Knight aggressively expanded its transactional practice at the end of April, with three high-level lateral hires in just two days.
The firm announced on April 29 that M&A lawyer Roth Kehoe and financial services lawyer Robert Green had come aboard in Atlanta as partner and senior counsel, respectively. Both were previously at Hunton & Williams. The hiring of Kehoe expands the firm’s ability to carry out domestic and cross-border M&A in areas such as finance, energy, biotechnology, and healthcare. Green brings expertise in the technical aspects of data processing, product development, outsourcing, and regulatory compliance to the firm.
The firm has been rapidly building a presence in the southeast. In the first week of April, Holland & Knight announced that former Baker Donelson lawyer Terrence Davis joined as a partner and a co-chair of the firm’s investment management group in Atlanta, a city whose mayor, Kasim Reed, was in the same class with Davis at Howard University School of Law and is a former Holland & Knight partner.
The announcement of the hiring of Kehoe and Green came just a day after the firm welcomed Margaret Laffler as a real estate finance partner based in New York. Laffler, who previously held an in-house role at a company, provides counsel to institutional lenders on the issuance of letters of credit applicable to bond issuances, and advises lenders in real estate financing and development, with a particular emphasis on affordable housing.
“Two of my former colleagues arrived here about a year before me, and they were and remain very happy here. Their practice fits in nicely with the tax credit transactional group that we’re in,” Laffler told IFLR1000.
“Everything depends on interest rates, but the affordable housing sector that I work in remains pretty robust because of current rates and because of how competitive it is right now. We are very busy,” Laffler added.