Allen & Overy promotes 40 in partnership bonanza

City giant Allen & Overy drew ahead of the pack last week when it announced the promotion of 40 partners, taking its total to 307 partners worldwide.

The promotions showed a 15% growth in the firm's total number of partners.

The likes of Linklaters, Freshfields, Slaughter and May, Herbert Smith, Dibb Lupton Alsop, Norton Rose and Ashurst Morris Crisp have all increased their partnerships by around 10%.Most of the new partners (22) are based away from the London headquarters.

The promotions take the number of overseas partners from 32% of the total partnership to 44%.

Allen & Overy is in the middle of a five-year plan to boost its number of foreign-qualified lawyers to match the number of English-qualified.The majority of new partners will be concentrated in the firm's banking (13), corporate (12) and international capital markets (12) groups.

This week the firm also announced two US-qualified partners, Ian Shrank and William A Macan, were joining the firm's New York office from Morgan Lewis & Bockius, taking the total to 90 US-qualified lawyers.Managing partner John Rink said it was determined to be a truly pan-European partnership and growth of offices in Europe, US and Asia were part of that plan.Sue Allen