Noerr expands Private Equity practice with Moritz Koch

Noerr is continuing the growth strategy for its Hamburg office and further expanding its strong market position in private equity: on 1 June, Moritz Koch will be joining Noerr as an associated partner, coming from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

Moritz Koch specialises in advising financial and strategic investors as well as private equity firms. He regularly handles cross-border transactions and joint ventures, focusing particularly on Asian investors. At Noerr in Hamburg he will mainly be working with Volker Land, co-head of the office and specialist in M&A transactions involving banks, media companies as well as international financial and private equity investors such as J.C. Flowers.

“With Moritz Koch joining us, we are expanding our sector-focused market position in the area of private equity,” says Georg Schneider, co-head of Noerr’s Private Equity practice. “We have a particularly strong market position in Hamburg when it comes to advising private equity firms from the finance sector. We are now expanding our industry portfolio in Hamburg to advise on complex private equity transactions,” adds Volker Land.

Beyond Hamburg, Moritz Koch will be part of Noerr’s Private Equity practice with its more than 50 legal and tax experts. As of 1 May, the practice has also been strengthened by Dominik Waldvogel who joined Noerr as a new senior associate. Coming from Milbank, Dominik has many years of experience in private equity consulting. He will work from Noerr’s Munich office.

Moritz Koch comments on his move: “I am looking forward to working with my new colleagues in this very successful team; the practice has been contributing substantially to Noerr’s strong market position in the transactions sector.” According to the information service Mergermarket, with 63 completed deals, Noerr was number one once again in 2019 in M&A advisory among law firms based in German-speaking countries.

By hiring Moritz Koch, Noerr is also continuing its expansion in Hamburg: a total of 37 lawyers, including the new associated partner, will be working at Noerr’s Hamburg office, including nine partners and four associated partners. The number of lawyers has nearly doubled in three years. Noerr opened this office, which is headed by Volker Land and Christoph Spiering, on 1 April 2017. Transactions managed by the Hamburg office include the takeover of HSH Nordbank by Noerr client and private equity investor J.C. Flowers.

With a team of more than 50 legal and tax experts and 200+ projects annually, the Private Equity practice headed by Christian Pleister and Georg Schneider is one of the leading practices for private equity and growth capital. It advises both well-known private equity investors such as Apollo, 3G Capital, Bridgepoint, Deutsche Private Equity, KKR, J.C. Flowers and Orlando Management as well as market-leading growth capital and tech companies such as Zalando, Rocket Internet, HelloFresh and Global Fashion Group. Major matters in the recent past include advising Apollo Global Management on the sale of a real estate package to Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC (valued at almost one billion euros), US investor KKR on a total of five transactions in the German media market to create the new media platform Leonine, Bregal Unternehmerkapital on the takeover of the Reline Group, and 3G Capital in the bidding process for the lift division of thyssenkrupp. Furthermore, Global Fashion Group relied on Noerr’s legal advice for its IPO in Frankfurt.