Squire Patton Boggs Seeks Financial Edge in Political Chaos (1)

Squire Patton Boggs, known for having lawyers advise about government, has hired two asset managers in recognition that Washington policy increasingly rattles markets.

Daniel Rudder, a former principal of Davidson Kempner Capital Management, and Nathan Romano, former president of alternative credit manager Atalaya Capital Management, have been tasked with selling prospective clients on Squire’s ability to analyze the impact of a volatile political environment on asset valuations.

Since Rudder’s hire last June, the firm has netted new client relationships with two venture funds investing in global uranium markets, said Ed Newberry, Squire’s global managing partner, in an interview. The firm declined to provide further specificity on the new clients. “They aren’t huge projects yet,” Newberry said. “But they are legal projects we wouldn’t have otherwise been involved in.”

Daniel Rudder

Squire Patton Boggs

Squire’s effort to grow its clientele among asset managers comes as private capital investments achieved steady growth in recent years, fueling the financial success of top law firms such as Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins. Private market assets under management are expected to surpass $15 trillion this year, according to a report by credit rating agency S&P Global.

President Donald Trump’s tariff pronouncements have led several firms, including Squire, to tout their professionals’ expertise in international trade. The White House this week announced—and then temporarily held off on—a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico. Meanwhile, it added a 10% tariff on imports from China. Rudder said he’s following the impact of US trade relationships on asset manager portfolios.

Offering clients professionals who are “embedded” in the asset management space could be “extremely powerful” for Squire, said Mike McNamara, CEO of legal industry advisory Baretz + Brunelle.

“Everyone is looking for an angle to grow revenue, and everyone is looking for a way to demonstrate to clients their value,” McNamara said. “It makes the lawyer work product clients are paying $1,500 an hour for all the more impactful because they can speak the language of the clients effectively.”

Financial Experience

Newberry said the firm seeks to differentiate itself from other investment advisors by marrying legal advice with analysis of non-financial risk, the latter of which asset managers typically lack, he said. “What they don’t do very well is analyze non-financial risk,” he said.

Rudder, who joined Squire last June, served as a principal at Davidson Kempner from 2017 to 2023. There, Rudder said he played a leadership role in the investment research division and hired Squire to aid in policy analysis in 2018. A representative for Davidson Kempner declined to comment on Rudder’s tenure and departure.

“I’m going to leverage Squire’s policy insights to help clients make better decisions about policy and regulatory trends,” Rudder said, citing US Steel’s embattled acquisition by Japanese manufacturer Nippon, which has been opposed by former President Biden and President Trump, as an example of a geopolitically fraught deal. “Not to sound too cynical, but politics does impact that process.”

As one of his first duties launching the asset management practice as senior advisor at Squire, Rudder said he recruited Romano to join the practice in a part-time advisory role. Romano, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and head of Credit Suisse’s “One Bank” strategy in the US, said a mutual friend at Credit Suisse introduced the two.

Nathan Romano

Squire Patton Boggs

Romano started at the firm in December, four months after he left his role as president of alternative credit manager Atalaya Capital Management, where he helped shepherd the firm’s $450 million acquisition by Blue Owl Capital. Romano said he will continue consulting companies he helped take public on his own time and incubating two other financial services firms.

“When we sold Atalaya to Blue Owl, I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial,” Romano said. “Having been a buyer of these kinds of services, as well as sitting at the top of the food-chain selling intellectual capital at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, I know they don’t have this edge.”

Seeking an Edge

Romano said Squire, with its bench of former government officials, like former defense secretary Mark Esper, has a leg up on top law firms with established investment management practices, like Sullivan & Cromwell and Kirkland. “They don’t have these deep government contacts,” he said.

Representatives for Atalaya Capital Management did not return a request for comment on Romano’s tenure there and his exit. Squire defended Atalaya Capital Management in a 2012 lawsuit brought by debt collector Riverwalk Holdings.

Yet McNamara, former CEO of Dentons US, said law firms staffed with lawyers that have spent their careers structuring private capital deals have nothing to fret over Squire Patton Boggs’ efforts to advance a “parallel strategy” of advising on political risk analysis, McNamara said.

“Firms that are looking to get their footing in this space are gaining industry leaders as an accelerant, not necessarily to displace, but to provide a complementary perspective” to other law firms, McNamara said.

Newberry said that while his new hires are still early in their tenure, he hopes they continue to bring the firm a dimension that it lacked in the past. “Asset managers are great at financial analysis,” he said. “You tweak the interest rate one tenth of a percent, and they know what’s going to happen with precision.”