Having carried out the high profile re-election of its global chief executive Peter Martyr in autumn, Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) has decided to stay the course with its LLP chair position and has re-appointed longstanding partner Stephen Parish as chair of Norton Rose Fulbright LLP.
MacRoberts has defied the depressed Scottish legal market by expanding to 49 partners, the highest in its history, after poaching four partners from DWF.
US firms’ financials are continuing their positive trend, with recent releases showing revenue spikes and profit boosts including for Davis Polk & Wardwell and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison which both broke the billion-dollar mark in gross revenues last year.
Norton Rose Fulbright’s UK registered limited liability partnership (LLP) has recorded a near 4% increase in profit for the 2013/14 financial year alongside a 6.3% reduction in total borrowings while Fieldfisher’s net debt nearly doubled as the firm saw its profits decline.
Shearman & Sterling and Slaughter and May are among firms to have landed roles advising on Canadian insurance group Fairfax’s £1.2bn takeover of specialty insurer Brit as the group looks to boost its presence in the City.
Partners at Bird & Bird have joined the rush to expand into consultancy work, launching an IT project consultancy Baseline in a joint venture with Lancashire-based ASE Consulting.
Not wanting to be outdone by their US colleagues, who recently launched DLA Piper’s first non-legal entity selling cybersecurity software subscriptions for $25,000 a year, the firm’s London office is preparing to rollout an e-learning product for both associates and clients.
Pinsent Masons’ latest accounts, filed at Companies House, reveal a 3.7% profit increase alongside a 5.9% rise in headcount in the financial year to 30 April 2014, while the firm’s net debt nearly tripled.
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe have become the latest firms to announce how many of their spring 2015 qualifiers they are set to retain, with BLP seeing its rate slip from 89% in 2014 to 70% this year.
German food flavourings maker Symrise and its Mexican subsidiary are suing Baker & McKenzie for £11.7m at the High Court, arguing that the law firm’s advice on ‘aggressive financial engineering’ to avoid tax in Mexico failed when the company paid out £11.2m.
