Hogan Lovells co-CEOs J. Warren Gorrell Jr. and David Harris will vacate their posts when their current terms expire next summer, and the firm's partners are in the process of voting to approve their proposed successor, global litigation cohead Stephen Immelt, the firm announced Wednesday.
Gorrell and Harris, both of whom are 59, have shared the CEO title since their respective legacy firms, Hogan & Hartson and Lovells, combined in a 2010 tie-up that the two men took the lead in negotiating. Their four-year terms are set to end next summer, and—pending the results of a firmwide partnership vote—Immelt is likely to step into the newly created sole CEO role as of July 1.
Should the partners approve Immelt's ascension to CEO, he would be joined in the firm's upper echelon by global finance practice head David Hudd, a London-based Lovells legacy partner set to fill a second newly created post, deputy CEO. After stepping down from their leadership positions, Harris plans to retire, while Gorrell will continue his M&A practice.
Hogan Lovells chair Nicholas Cheffings tells The Am Law Daily that he and his fellow board members decided to alter the firm's structure after a poll of the partnership revealed that, more than three years after the combination, "the vast majority thought that the time was right to move to a single CEO."
Read Tom Huddleston Jr.'s report at affiliate publication The Am Law Daily here.
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