Deutsche Bank has appointed a new head of legal for its Birmingham office, charged with growing the department’s size and the range of business-critical advice it provides to the bank across Europe, Asia and Africa.

Jonathan Marshall joined the bank last week from magic circle firm Allen & Overy’s Saudi Arabia office in Riyadh. The legal team, currently around 40 lawyers, handles advice on derivatives, securities and finance, structured products and global prime finance.

Marshall told the Gazette: ‘I’m excited about what Deutsche Bank is doing in Birmingham, which will give the team here greater opportunities to grow and develop. There is an intention to bring work here that was previously only done in financial hub centres.’

Deutsche Bank opened its offices in Birmingham in 2007, and has since grown to a headcount of 1,000.

The bank has said it intends to rapidly double that figure over the next year as it designates the Birmingham office as one of its ‘centres of excellence’. It is due to move to new prestige premises, Five Brindleyplace (pictured), in summer 2014.

‘The bank’s presence in Birmingham is providing business-critical services to the bank,’ Marshall added.

‘We see the potential here to expand into transactional work as and when the bank decides to do so,’ he said. ‘We are currently recruiting lawyers across all our practices and at all levels of seniority. What Deutsche Bank is doing here will give them chances for career progression.’ 

The Law Society’s regional manager for the Midlands, Ravinder Hothi, commented: ’The incredible concentration of commercial legal expertise in the Birmingham legal market is well established – so the renewed confidence we’ve seen in the legal market has deep foundations.’ 

Hothi added: ‘Deutsche Bank’s plans to bring work to the city that was previously the preserve of financial hub locations, and to grow its legal team here, will strengthen the legal community and further the growth it is so clearly capable of.’

The Gazette’s feature on the Birmingham legal market can be read in Monday’s edition of the magazine.