Law360 is providing free access to its coronavirus coverage to make sure all members of the legal community have accurate information in this time of uncertainty and change. Use the form below to sign up for any of our weekly newsletters. Signing up for any of our section newsletters will opt you in to the weekly Coronavirus briefing.
Sign up for our Mergers & Acquisitions newsletter
You must correct or enter the following before you can sign up:
Thank You!
Law360 (April 27, 2020, 12:03 PM EDT) --
 |
| Graeme Sloan |
Graeme Sloan departed Morrison & Foerster LLP at the end of last month after four years and 10 months of employment, the firm confirmed to Law360 on Monday.
"We can confirm that Graeme Sloan left the firm at the end of March to pursue other interests and opportunities," a spokesperson for MoFo said via email. "We are grateful for Graeme's assistance in building the corporate department in our London office, and we wish him well in his future endeavors."
Sloan exited MoFo to take a new job at U.K.-based biotech Izana Bioscience, according to his LinkedIn profile. He's a member of the Izana deal team, and his LinkedIn lists him as having been there since the start of April.
"I am honored to have joined the Izana deal team at such an important time," Sloan wrote on LinkedIn roughly three weeks ago, linking to a press release from the company that details its efforts to help combat the coronavirus pandemic.
According to that press release from April 6, Izana is in the midst of studying whether a drug called namilumab might be a potential treatment for patients with "rapidly worsening COVID-19." The study is being done in tandem with the Humanitas research group in Bergamo and Milan, Italy.
Namilumab is a fully human monoclonal antibody therapy that was developed by Izana to treat issues including rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis, and early data shows it could be beneficial for certain patients infected with COVID-19.
Sloan had worked at MoFo since July 2015, per his LinkedIn page. Before that, he spent a little over nine years at Latham & Watkins LLP, where he was a partner. Prior to joining Latham in May 2006, Sloan spent about 14 years as a partner at U.K.-based law firm Maclay Murray & Spens LLP.
His career in the legal world began in 1990 as a manager at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, and before that he spent a year working as a tax senior at Ernst & Young.
The fact that Sloan got his legal start at Freshfields and wound up at MoFo before departing for the gig at Izana is interesting, as this represents the second time in the last month that Freshfields and MoFo have come up with regard to a big-time M&A lawyer leaving or joining one of those firms.
In mid-April, Mitchell Presser left Freshfields after more than five years as U.S. head of mergers and acquisitions to join MoFo as a partner and co-chair of the firm's global corporate department.
That move followed a November announcement from Freshfields that it brought in a group of veteran M&A lawyers led by Ethan Klingsberg, who currently serves as head of M&A in the U.S.
A representative for Izana did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Sloan did not immediately respond to a message sent on LinkedIn.
--Editing by Rebecca Flanagan.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
