Dentons Promotes 13 New Partners Across Europe and Central Asia in 2026 Round Spanning Banking, Restructuring, and M&A Practice Groups
Dentons has announced its 2026 promotion round for its Europe and Central Asia region, elevating 13 lawyers to partner, six to Senior Counsel, six to Managing Counsel, and 30 to Counsel across the region. The newly promoted partners are spread across Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, and Türkiye. The promotions cover a range of practice areas with direct relevance to commercial transactional work: Corporate and M&A, Banking and Finance, Employment and Labour, Restructuring, Competition and Antitrust, Public Law and Regulatory, and Real Estate. In Germany, promoted partners include Jakob Pickartz in Restructuring in Berlin, Andreas Schuler in Public Law and Regulatory/TMT in Düsseldorf, Michael Singer in Corporate and M&A in Munich, and Josef Tahmaz in Employment and Labour in Düsseldorf. In Türkiye, the promotions include Çisem Altundemir in Corporate and M&A, Gözde Manav Kılıçbeyli in Employment and Labour, and Ceren Su in Banking and Finance, all based in Istanbul. The scale and breadth of the promotion round reflects Dentons' continued investment in its European platform — notable given the firm's position as one of the world's largest by headcount — and signals ongoing demand for transactional and restructuring capability across the region in a period of elevated deal activity and debt market complexity.
Why this matters
Large promotion rounds at global firms like Dentons are a proxy for platform investment: promoting from within is cheaper than lateral hiring and signals confidence in pipeline demand across the promoted practice areas. The concentration of promotions in Banking and Finance, Restructuring, and M&A across Germany, Turkey, and broader Europe reflects where deal flow is — German corporate restructuring remains active amid energy cost pressures, while Turkish banking and finance mandates have grown with the country's elevated inflation and credit market complexity. For law students, this is also a direct indicator of which practice areas are growing at global firms with large European networks.
On the Ground
On a banking and finance matter, a trainee would manage CP (conditions precedent) checklist updates, review security document schedules, and coordinate legal opinion requests from local counsel in each relevant jurisdiction. On a restructuring matter, they would assist with drafting board minutes documenting key decisions and preparing completion bibles.
Interview prep
Soundbite
Internal promotions at scale signal where firms expect sustained deal demand — restructuring and banking finance are the telling choices here.
Question you might get
“Why might a global firm like Dentons choose to promote internally into restructuring and banking finance rather than making lateral hires in those practice areas?”
Full answer
Dentons has promoted 13 lawyers to partner across Europe and Central Asia, with the round covering banking and finance, restructuring, M&A, and antitrust. The geographic spread — Germany, Turkey, France, Romania — reflects where transactional and restructuring demand is concentrated in the current cycle. For law firms, growing the equity partnership through internal promotion is a deliberate platform investment, typically made when the business case for that practice area is strong over a three-to-five year horizon. The inclusion of Istanbul-based banking and finance alongside German restructuring partners points to two distinct market drivers: Turkish credit complexity and the continuing European corporate distress cycle. This suggests firms with broad European networks will continue to generate strong deal flow in these areas through the rest of 2026.
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