Cooley has added a Singapore-based executive director and senior counsel in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs as a partner.

Tim Pitrelli has joined the US firm as its first capital markets partner in the city-state and brings experience in IPOs, follow‐on offerings and other regional and international cross-border transactions, as well as knowledge of the Singapore and Southeast Asia markets.

“Tim is a respected lawyer and is lauded as a knowledgeable capital markets practitioner across equity offerings,” said Dave Peinsipp, co-chair of Cooley’s global capital markets practice, adding that his experience at Goldman “will prove to be invaluable for our issuer clients, while also deepening our expertise in representing our investment banking clients.”

Pitrelli’s practice focuses on complex transactions involving issuers with operations across Asia, as well as in the US, the UK and EU. Prior to joining Goldman in 2013 he was a Singapore-based assistant general counsel and director at Bank of America for three years and an associate at Latham & Watkins for six years, where he practiced in New York, California and Singapore.

“I’m excited to join Cooley and augment the firm’s capital markets presence in Asia,” Pitrelli said. “The opportunity to get in early in a booming market and join a team at a firm whose platform is purposefully built to represent leading companies with disruptive technologies is what drew me to Cooley.”

Pitrelli has become the fourth partner in Cooley’s Singapore office, which the firm launched at the start of 2020 having added local Gunderson Dettmer corporate partner Ferish Patel and relocated Matthew Bartus, co-chair of its global emerging companies practice, from Silicon Valley to serve as the office’s first resident partners. Fund formation partner Sean Murphy joined a year later from a role as counsel at Shearman & Sterling.

Cooley also expanded its capital markets offering in the US last April, adding White & Case partner Rupa Briggs and Fenwick & West counsel Nicolas Dumont as partners in New York. The hires came at a buoyant time for public offerings, particularly through special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) issuance, with more SPACs having gone public by the second week of last March than in the whole of 2020 according to Refinitiv. 

And last May capital markets partners Christina Roupas and Courtney Tygesson were among nine Cooley hired from Latham & Watkins, DLA Piper and Winston & Strawn to set up shop in Chicago, as it sought to tap into the Midwest’s burgeoning venture capital scene and growing tech and life sciences industry.