CMS adds three to real estate team

Law firm CMS has hired three recruits to its real estate team in Manchester from Squire Patton Boggs, Eversheds, and Blunts.

Talha Javed has joined from Squire Batton Boggs and specialises in residential developments and portfolio management, while Prisca Wharton has joined from Blunts Solicitors, and specialises in commercial property transactions.

John Figura has also joined from Eversheds with a specialism in real estate transactions.

All three will work with real estate partner Nathan Jansen out of the firm’s Spinningfields office. He said: “Our three new joiners add to the recent expansion of our construction team, which has seen its size quadruple from two to eight in less than a year, and further cements CMS’s reputation as one of the leading advisors to the real estate and construction sector in the city”.

The law firm’s construction team, headed up by Chris Hallm, has also recently added three new hires, including from Brabners and Pennington Manches.

Projects the construction team is advising on include Mayfield, where the team is the sole legal advisors to the Mayfield Partnership, led by developer U+I, which is pressing forward with an £800m overhaul of the site next to Piccadilly Station.

Other projects the CMS team is working on include Renaker’s Deansgate Square; Marcus Worthington Group’s speculative office development at 125 Deansgate; and Far East Consortium’s £1bn Northern Gateway, a 15,000-home masterplan stretching from Victoria Station to Collyhurst.