‘There is hope that 2024 will be a year of recovery for the M&A market,’ says Gavin Davies, head of Herbert Smith Freehills’ global M&A practice.
Over at FTSE adviser stalwart Slaughter and May, the firm’s co-head of corporate and M&A, Richard Smith, agrees that the firm is ‘happy’ with the way 2024 has started but admits that things are ‘still quite fragile’.
Continue reading “Cleared for departure – charting the course for deal optimism”
Whatever metric you track, 2023 was a poor year for M&A. One bright spark amid the gloom was the proposed £15bn merger between Vodafone UK and Three UK, which was announced in summer 2023. If cleared by competition authorities, the deal will create the UK’s biggest mobile phone operator.
The transaction was one of the five largest announced UK M&A deals by value last year according to Dealogic data, seeing Vodafone and CK Hutchison – the Hong-Kong based owner of Three – announce their intention to combine both UK mobile arms.
Continue reading “Dialling in the deal – the inside track on the Vodafone/Three merger”
Why did you decide to become an M&A lawyer, and has it lived up to expectations?
M&A was the fourth seat of my training contract at King & Wood Mallesons. Until then, I was going to be a litigator.
I’ve always been swayed by people more than anything else. During my fourth seat I was supervised by the incredible Alison Lansley – a leading M&A partner in Australia. She is inspirational… and the decision to qualify in M&A was an easy one.
The Legal 500’s London M&A rankings are among the most competitive across the entire UK guide, with high-profile dealmakers vying for position among the upper echelons of the market, national practices competing for recognition in the mid-market, and smaller, specialist teams hoovering up lower-value – but just as complex – transactions for acquisitive clients. Continue reading “The real deal – the firms dominating the rankings for M&A”
Why did you decide to become an M&A lawyer, and has it lived up to expectations?
My great grandfather was a lawyer, my grandfather was a lawyer, my father is a lawyer. I told my parents when I finished high school that I was considering a career as a doctor… you can imagine the reaction…
In many ways, the deal is the easy part. Financing in place, subclauses, choosing exactly the right type of pen to make things official, and there you have it – it’s announced. Your company intends to acquire another company – and at a great price! You’re confident this is a transaction from which the public will benefit as well. You, the buyer. Them, the seller. Any number of interested third parties. You hold these things to be self-evident – it’s a good deal.
Then the phone rings. Your blood chills. There’s somebody you forgot to ask.
The Federal Trade Commission. Worse still – the Department of Justice agrees with them.
Continue reading “To live or die in DC – getting deals done amid US antitrust crackdown”
Why did you decide to become an M&A lawyer, and has it lived up to expectations?
I became an M&A lawyer because I was instantly drawn to the pace and diversity that comes with being at the centre of a transaction – I don’t think my personality would work well not knowing everything about everything on a transaction. Being an M&A partner has definitely lived up to my expectations – it has been a privilege to work with really smart, dedicated and diverse teams within my firm, and with clients and advisers – the feeling of being part of a team that is striving to achieve something difficult together is the reason I still love what I do.
‘The personality types attracted to law often highly value accuracy and delivering the “perfect” answer, but that single-minded goal can be almost impossible in our business – it’s something that can be detrimental to your health and your relationships with your team and family.’
As Hogan Lovells’ UK managing partner Penny Angell explains, the challenge of reconciling Type A personalities with work/life balance is a puzzle that most top law firms have not yet solved. Continue reading “Stress test – partners on how they deal with a life under pressure”
Pride Month is here again; corporate social media profiles are awash with the colours of LGBTQ+ pride, drag queens are braving office lighting for bingo events, and rainbow flags, lanyards and badges are all over the City.
Since the first Pride parade in London in 1972, three years after the start of the gay rights movement in New York following the Stonewall riots, the concept of Pride has grown from its protest origins to a colourful celebration of queerness, and, to some more cynical eyes, a marketing opportunity. Continue reading “Great minds don’t think alike – why LGBTQ+ allyship is a business must-have”
AI may appear to be a relatively nascent development but in reality this is far from the case. John McCarthy first coined the term back in 1956, and since then we have seen IBM’s Deep Blue and Watson machines beat chess and Jeopardy champions, and Apple create its virtual assistant, Siri. Now, the rise of generative AI models such as ChatGPT have not only significantly changed the performance of AI but have also caught the attention of the mainstream media, exploding into the public consciousness with their accessibility.
At a foundational level, AI uses computer science and datasets to enable problem-solving. The technology takes on a human-like function – learning, reading, writing, analysing and researching. AI can be applied to an extensive range of systems and products, from customer service and recommendation engines to supply chains and document creation, which effectively creates a new world of possibilities. Continue reading “AI: ‘Is it going to destroy humankind? No. The good parts are worth pursuing’”
