Sidley Austin - Playbook (Winter Vacation Scheme 2026)

Sidley Austin's Winter Vacation Scheme application is now OPEN (and it's rolling)!

This Playbook covers:

🧠 Sidley key growth areas
💸 Why is Finance a big deal?
❗ Sidley's biggest challenge
🔍 How to Stand Out

Plus how to use this information to stand out in your application and interviews!

⏱️ Deadline: 25 September

London Finance is key for Growth

What's going on?

Sidley has been boosting its finance expertise by hiring key partners from top rivals, like Lathams.

Here's how it did it:

• 💸 In August 2024 Sidley began raiding Latham & Watkins in London with a five-partner leveraged finance team led by Jayanthi (Jay) Sadanandan and Sam Hamilton, now global co-heads of Sidley's leveraged finance practice.
• 📈 By April 2025 the count had reached at least 10 Latham partners in nine months, including finance co-chair Tania Bedi and high-yield capital markets partners Scott Colwell and Patrick Kwak.
• 📊 By 2 July 2026 the firm had made its 29th London lateral partner hire in three years, insurance M&A partner Carl Hotton from DLA Piper, with roughly 12 of the lateral partners drawn from Latham since late 2024.

💡 Leveraged finance means lending to fund private equity buyouts, with debt secured on the acquired company.

Why does this matter?

When a private equity firm buys a business, it does not pay for the whole thing itself. A big chunk of the price is borrowed, and the loan is secured on the company being bought. That borrowing has to be arranged, negotiated and documented, and that is the work Sidley has gone after.

The other half of the picture is who is doing the lending. It used to be banks. Increasingly it is investment funds lending directly, and those funds now sit at the centre of a lot of London deals. Sidley has decided the best fees are on that side of the table, acting for the buyers and the funds that finance them.

How to use this in your application: