Herbert Smith Freehills confirmed today that it has recruited to its partnership Rod Fletcher, one of the UK’s leading business crime and investigations specialists.
Rod will join Herbert Smith Freehills’ disputes practice in London in April 2013 and lead its top-ranked corporate crime and investigations team, in conjunction with partner Graham More. He will work very closely with Susannah Cogman and Dan Hudson, the other London-based partners in this team. The team is part of the firm’s global corporate crime practice, and works in London as part of a broader group that also covers contentious financial services regulatory, banking litigation and public law – areas of expertise that the firm has brought together into a unified offering to clients.
Herbert Smith Freehills has a long-standing dedicated corporate crime practice. Given the implementation and increased enforcement in recent years of anti-corruption legislation, such as the Bribery Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices (FCPA), and a regulatory focus on financial crime compliance, the practice has grown rapidly across the world. In 2011, Herbert Smith Freehills appointed Kyle Wombolt, a US and Hong Kong qualified lawyer with extensive FCPA experience, to head up its Asia investigations practice. It is shortly to establish an on-the-ground US investigations practice, following the opening of its New York office in September 2012. Other offices in the international network also offer specialist white collar crime and corruption expertise.
Rod joins Herbert Smith Freehills from Russell Jones and Walker where he was head of Business Crime and Regulation. He has a range of experience advising corporates and individuals and has been consistently ranked in the legal directories for his expertise in corporate / white-collar crime, fraud and regulatory investigations. In the Chambers UK 2012 directory he is ranked as a star individual in the ‘Fraud: Criminal: UK-Wide’ category. Rod is also a founding member of the Association of Regulatory and Disciplinary Lawyers.
Sonya Leydecker, head of Herbert Smith Freehills’ global disputes practice commented: “Rod is a practitioner of the highest calibre whose experience of heading a business / white collar crime practice and notably undertaking criminal representation and advisory work on investigations and prosecutions will be invaluable to us. We look forward to welcoming him to the firm.”
