Reed Smith non-contentious financial services regulatory head Jacqui Hatfield is leaving the firm's City office to join US rival Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe in London later this year.
Hatfield has been a partner at Reed Smith since 2008, when she joined from legacy Herbert Smith, where she was a senior associate. She is due to join Orrick in September.
She was appointed head of non-contentious financial services regulatory, which sits within Reed Smith's financial industry group, in 2015.
Hatfield specialises in fintech and her clients include peer-to-peer lending platforms, challenger banks and app payment providers. She also provides specialist regulatory advice on transactions within the financial services sector.
Her hire is the first for Orrick's City office since it added private equity partner Ylan Steiner from King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) in December last year. The firm also picked up a team of Munich lawyers led by German head of corporate Christoph Brenner from KWM earlier that year.
Other European hires for Orrick have included Olswang Paris managing partner and corporate head Guillaume Kessler in January, and a four-lawyer team from Clifford Chance in the French capital the following month.
Orrick saw revenue grow 1.8% last year to $929m, but revenue per lawyer and profits per equity partner both declined, results that chairman and CEO Mitchell Zuklie attributed partly to a lateral hiring spree by the firm.