John Armour has been appointed Lovells Professor of Law and Finance at Oxford University. He is the first to hold the chair. Armour, a senior lecturer in law and Fellow of Trinity Hall at Cambridge, takes up his appointment in July and will become a Fellow of Oriel College.

Armour studied law at Oxford and Yale. He has published widely in company law, corporate finance and corporate insolvency. His main research interest lies in the integration of legal and economic analysis, with particular emphasis on the impact on the real economy of changes in the law governing insolvency and company law.

Makbool Javaid, an employment specialist, has joined the West End firm of Simons Muirhead & Burton from DLA Piper.

Javaid, who was head of the equality and diversity group, becomes head of employment at Simons Muirhead. Joining with him are Ewan Keen, who is also joining as a partner, and Dennis Taylor, who will head the employment group’s in-house training, HR consultancy and information services.

Before joining DLA Piper’s London office, Javaid was head of litigation services at the Commission for Racial Equality.

Norton Rose has boosted its US law capability with the hire of Mike Dunn as a partner from the London office of Latham & Watkins.

Dunn, who was a senior associate at the Los Angeles-based Latham & Watkins, specialises in advising on cross-border capital markets transactions. He has represented issuers, underwriters, sponsors and investors on a range of debt and equity security offerings. ”

Mark Keeler, a former partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, has joined the London office of Carey Olsen, the Channel Islands firm.

The move to head the Jersey firm’s corporate and finance group means that Keeler will return to London after spending ten years in Tokyo with Freshfields in the finance department. He joined Freshfields in 1997 from Slaughter and May, which he joined in 1986.

Caroline Mackenzie, the private client specialist, has joined Hunters as a partner.

She has made the move to the Lincoln’s Inn firm from Thomson Snell & Passmore and becomes the ninth partner in Hunter’s private client team.

Her practice covers tax and estate planning, wills and trusts as well as family office and Court of Protection work.

She arrives at the department as it promotes three assistants — Katie Martin, Louise Ellis and Lara McLaren — to associate status.

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