Matheson, Ireland’s largest law firm, is delighted to announce a number of senior appointments in its Corporate practice area. Davinia Brennan and Rory O’Keeffe have joined as partners in the Technology & Innovation Group, while Caroline Kearns and Niamh Mulholland have joined the Financial Institutions Group as partner and consultant respectively.
Michael Jackson, Managing Partner of Matheson, said: “We are delighted to welcome these four senior legal practitioners to partnership at Matheson. Their domestic and international experience and their deep sectoral knowledge will further strengthen our market leading IT, data privacy and regulatory offerings. These are sectors which continue to experience rapid transformational change and our lawyers work closely with many of the world’s leading companies in delivering transactions, solutions and products to meet changing customer and business demands.
The appointments also reflect our continued commitment to deliver excellent advice which is informed by sectoral expertise. Caroline, Niamh, Davinia and Rory will work as part of one of the largest corporate departments in any Irish law firm, advising on some of the most complex and high-profile legal transactions on the market. We also look forward to their contributions to our Pro Bono programme and to our Impactful Business Programme which is designed to deliver and support meaningful, sustainable and measurable change across our community of colleagues, clients and society.”
In addition to the eight new partners appointed earlier this year, 2021 has also seen Matheson appoint 40 newly-qualified solicitors at the firm. 41% of the partnership at Matheson is female, and over 50% of partner appointments over the past three years have been female.
About Matheson’s new appointees:
Davinia Brennan (Technology and Innovation) joins Matheson as a partner in its Technology and Innovation Group. She has over 10 years’ expertise in data protection; privacy; information technology and; e-commerce law. Davinia advises international and domestic companies on all aspects of compliance with data protection and privacy law, including; handling data subject access requests; data breach incidents; regulatory investigations and; international data transfers. She also advises online businesses on evolving regulatory and consumer protection law obligations.
Davinia has presented and published widely on a range of technology related legal matters, in particular on data protection, intellectual property and information technology law. She is also a member of the editorial board of the PDP Data Protection Ireland Journal. Prior to joining Matheson, Davinia worked with another of Ireland’s corporate law firms, A&L Goodbody, where she specialised in these areas.
Caroline Kearns (Financial Institutions) joins as a partner in the Financial Institutions Group in Matheson’s Corporate and M&A Department. She has extensive experience advising on a broad range of international and domestic corporate transactions including; mergers and acquisitions; joint ventures; private equity; equity capital markets and; corporate reorganisations, with a particular focus on Financial Institutions and Insurance. Her clients include many of the world’s leading financial institutions and insurance market players.
Caroline regularly acts for many of Europe’s leading Warranty and Indemnity underwriters, advising on the underwriting of high value international M&A transactions, as well as domestic Irish transactions, across all sectors. She also counsels corporate clients on a broad range of governance and business-related matters, including directors' duties and responsibilities and general compliance matters.
Caroline trained and qualified as a solicitor in Matheson and, prior to re-joining as a partner, had spent over 10 years working with leading global law firms including Norton Rose Fulbright in London and, most recently, DLA Piper.
Niamh Mulholland (Financial Institutions) joins Matheson as a consultant in the firm’s Financial Institutions Group, having previously led the Asset Management Regulatory practice of KPMG, where she led the Irish Asset Management Regulatory practice providing advice to Irish and International Investment Banking, Investment Firm and Investment Fund clients, through authorisation, regulatory change projects, supervisory engagements, Risk Mitigation Programmes and Skilled Person Independent Reviews.
Niamh advises Irish and International Investment Banking, Investment Firm and Investment Fund clients, through authorisation, regulatory change projects, supervisory engagements, Risk Mitigation Programmes and Skilled Peron / Independent Reviews. Her work involves assisting clients with ‘own initiative’ reviews and change programmes as well as responses to supervisory inspections.
She previously worked at the Central Bank of Ireland where she acted as the ESMA Board of Supervisors internal co-ordinator, was a member of a number of ESMA Standing Committees and was involved in the negotiations to enact the EU Market Abuse Regulation, MiFID II/MiFIR and PRIIPs.
Rory O'Keeffe (Technology and Innovation) has been appointed as partner in Matheson’s Technology and Innovation Group. He has extensive experience in a broad range of international and domestic technology and business transformation deals.
Rory brings together significant in-house and practical experience in advising on technology and commercial legal issues. A technology and outsourcing lawyer, he has a particular specialism in cloud, digital and business transformation, AI, Robotics, IoT, cybersecurity, system integration and complex technology contracting.
He re-joins Matheson having spent over 10 years as Senior Legal Counsel in Accenture in London, where he advised on a number of complex, high value, fast-paced, innovative, multi-jurisdictional deals. Rory supported industries in health, public services, communications and media telecommunications, financial services, utilities, and products. Rory is a committee member of the Society of Computers and Law, with a particular interest in the work of the Inclusion and Diversity group and regularly presents on topics such as Cybersecurity, and Artificial Intelligence.
