Tom Butcher returns to Allen & Overy

Allen & Overy announced that alumnus Tom Butcher has returned to the firm as a partner to head up its Middle East Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) and Intellectual Property (IP) practice, with effect from March 20, 2016.

Tom Butcher returns to the firm after two years at Simmons & Simmons where he headed up their TMT and IP practice in the Middle East and Anglophone Africa and co-chaired the Middle East Growth Market Group. With over a decade of global and local TMT sector experience and more than seven years in the region, Butcher has advised public and private sector clients on complex commercial and regulatory projects, digital collaborations as well as mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance transactions. He has particular expertise in strategic outsourcing, technology procurement, data protection and transactional IP. Butcher will lead A&O’s Middle East Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) and IP practice, advising clients across the TMT, life sciences and healthcare, financial institutions, and energy and infrastructure sectors. He is already regarded as a TMT specialist ranked as a “leading individual” in the UAE by Legal 500, and is described as “up and coming” by Chambers Global 2015.

Further, the firm announced Wim Dejonghe has been elected senior partner with effect from May 1, 2016 for an initial term of four years. Dejonghe will succeed David Morley who will retire at the end of April following the completion of two terms as senior partner.

Dejonghe joined Allen & Overy as a partner in 2001 having previously been a partner at Loeff Claeys Verbeke since 1993. He has practised law in the United States (New York and Washington) and in Spain (Barcelona). Dejonghe was previously managing partner of Allen & Overy's Antwerp and Brussels offices and co-head of the Global Corporate Department. For the past eight years Dejonghe has been Allen & Overy’s global managing partner.