Willkie hires experienced ILS lawyer David Luce as Partner

International law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP has announced the hiring of David Luce, a senior lawyer with significant insurance-linked securities (ILS) experience, as well as experience of a range of alternative risk transfer and financing structures.

Luce joins Willkie Farr & Gallagher as a Partner in the firm’s Insurance Transactional and Regulatory Practice in New York.

He joins from his most recent position as a Partner at rival DLA Piper, where his work encompassed many areas of insurance and reinsurance transactional law, including insurance-linked securities (ILS).

“Over the years we have worked with David on some of the insurance industry’s most significant M&A, alternative risk transfer and financing transactions,” John Schwolsky Co-Chair of the Willkie Insurance Transactional and Regulatory Practice Group commented. “We have the highest respect for David and his practice and are delighted to have him join us.”

Luce added, “Willkie’s best-in-class insurance practice and growing tech-focused capabilities are an ideal complement to my current work, and present a terrific opportunity to expand my practice. I look forward to working with the talented team at Willkie to further enhance our services to clients.”

Luce has over 20 years of experience in complex insurance related transactions, regulatory matters and litigation.

His experience extends across insurance and reinsurance related mergers and acquisitions, insurtech and venture capital funding and financings, reinsurance transactions and law, securities offerings, variable annuity hedging, collateralized sidecar arrangements, catastrophe bonds, transformer based ILS trades, insurance and weather-linked derivatives, longevity and mortality swaps and pension risk solutions.

Luce also advises insurance companies on strategic venture investments, as well as insurtech emerging growth companies and start-ups.

Willkie has been expanding its global insurance practice in recent months, with Luce the latest in a list of hires, including partners Melanie James and Tim Baumgartner in London earlier this year, partner PK Paran and counsel Gabriel Gershowitz in New York in October 2021, and partners Kara Baysinger, Stephanie Duchene, Matthew Gaul and David Heales added in California and New York in April 2021.