CC and Dentons have both made major changes to the internal structure of their projects teams, citing better resourcing of deals and hedging against fluctuations in the market as two key issues behind the changes.
CC — which distanced itself from the traditional ‘projects’ tag around three years ago by renaming the team the energy and infrastructure group (EIG) — has now fused the London EIG department with its asset and structured finance practice.
The teams, which will continue to be marketed separately, will be co-headed by current head of projects Andrew Grenville and asset finance chief Geoffrey White. Grenville told Legal Week that the move would enable the firm to draw on larger groups for big deals and allow junior lawyers a broader variety of transactions to work on.
The shake-up follows a similar move by CC in February, when it overhauled its capital markets practice, bringing together its debt and equity capital markets teams and expanding the group to include structured debt and corporate trusts.
Dentons, meanwhile, has created a new energy, infrastructure and project finance department, after stripping out projects from its banking team. Former head of banking and finance Matthew Jones has been appointed as head of international project finance in the combined team, while Christopher McGee-Osborne will remain overall head.
Asset finance head Serge Sergiou and trade finance partner Nick Grandage have taken over from Jones as co-heads of banking and finance at the firm, while Matthew Harvey will take over as head of asset finance.
The moves follow a change by Linklaters in May to rename its European projects practice as ‘energy and infrastructure’. Earlier in the year Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer became the first major