High-profile litigation funder Vannin Capital has shelved its planned initial public offering (IPO) only one month after announcing its intention to float, blaming volatile equity markets. The move is a blow for the fast-growing litigation funder, which in September hired Allen & Overy veteran David Morley (pictured) as chair to spearhead the October listing, which …
Slaughter and May and Kirkland & Ellis have led on the $12bn combination of UK Plc offshore drilling companies Ensco and Rowan Companies as Travers Smith and Eversheds Sutherland wrap up Legal & General’s £2.4bn buyout of Nortel Networks UK Pension Plan. The drilling merger – an all-stock deal and a court-sanctioned scheme of arrangements – will …
In a move befitting of its unstoppable upward trajectory, Kirkland & Ellis has scored a new record in partner promotions, making up a striking 122 partners, of which 10 are in London. The overall tally across the Chicago-bred firms 14 international offices is an increase on last year’s mammoth round, which saw 97 new partners …
The partners of Bircham Dyson Bell and Pitmans have voted for a £50m merger and move to an alternative business structure (ABS). The pair announced today (28 September) that the respective partnerships had overwhelmingly approved the tie-up, which is hoped will propel them into the top 50 of the UK’s law firms. It first announced …
A further exit from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s City bench has seen corporate and capital markets partner Ashar Qureshi join the London offices of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. The move sees the well-respected Qureshi leave the Magic Circle firm after four years as a partner in its global transactions practice. The US securities veteran …
City heavyweights Allen & Overy (A&O), Clifford Chance (CC) and Eversheds Sutherland have landed key roles on Legal & General’s £4.4bn buy-in of the British Airways pension scheme as advisers cash in on a brace of Blackstone deals. UK insurer Legal & General is taking on £4.4bn of historic pension liabilities relating to the Airways Pension …
A light has lately shone on a legal document which, by definition, should never bask in the sunshine. The saga, which was to trigger reverberations concerning abusive behaviour in many industries – and lawyers’ role in drafting gagging orders – began in October 2017, with disclosures by British producer Zelda Perkins (pictured). In written evidence …
Continue reading “Draining the swamp – Do NDAs represent a #MeToo problem for the profession?”
This time last year, a collective sigh of relief from City dealmakers was reverberating around the Square Mile as the M&A market regained momentum despite a backdrop of economic and political uncertainty. Since then, deal counsel have barely paused for breath, with many juggling multiple deals well into the parts of August in which even …
‘There’s going to be a lot of distress on the high street,’ Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner Adam Plainer told Legal Business last autumn in an extended assessment of the City restructuring outlook. Given that insolvency lawyers have been confidently – and wrongly – predicting a flood of work since the banking crisis, such claims …
In what has been termed by one rival City partner as a ‘night of the long knives’, Ropes & Gray has axed four of its London real estate and restructuring partners. The move comes as the firm shifts the focus of the real estate practice back to its prized client base of asset managers, hedge …
Continue reading “‘No way a sign of retrenchment’: Ropes axes four partners amid London refocus”
