Manchester’s Pannone is offering voluntary redundancies to around 100 staff as a result of its recently announced takeover by Slater & Gordon (S&G).
As reported by RollOnFriday today (9 December), there will be no compulsory redundancies but Pannone has informed around 100 individuals that it is unlikely that there will be positions waiting for them at S&G. Neither Pannone nor S&G would comment when contacted by Legal Business.
It was a long time coming but Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) has finally agreed a compromise to unite equity partner pay just over a year after the union of Herbert Smith and Australian leader Freehills.
The deal will see the two firms combine their partnerships under a ‘global managed lockstep’, a break from previous attempts to usher in more radical performance-based rewards for the combined partnership.
As Legal Business reported three weeks ago, the firm has decided to allow legacy Freehills some latitude when it comes to how they pay their partners.
Pinsent Masons has launched a Paris TMT practice with a six-strong team from Paris-based boutique technology firm Ichay & Mullenex Avocats (IMA).
Led by partners Diane Mullenex and Frédéric Ichay, along with Annabelle Richards who joins as a legal director, the team will bolster Pinsents’ around 25-strong French base, which opened in September 2012 and includes 10 partners.
Since forming in 2004, IMA has focused on technology, telecoms, e-commerce transactions and in regulated online businesses, including gaming and gambling and is recommended in The Legal 500.
Here’s one anecdote that didn’t make it into this month’s extended focus on Ashurst. Sometime soon after the firm had pulled back from its late-1990s dalliance with Clifford Chance (CC), the first of three public failed merger bids for the firm, at least one partner had second thoughts. An overture was made to the Magic Circle firm to enquire if the discussions were worth re-kindling. The response from CC: ‘The window of opportunity opens… and then it closes’.
And there you have it. Flatfooted and left behind by a thrusting Magic Circle firm.
Following a six-month tender process the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) has appointed Hogan Lovells to advise on the sale of the £40bn Student Loans Company (SLC) debt portfolio.
In July BIS invited tenders for legal advice on the monetisation of the SLC’s loans portfolio, which is likely to take place either through a sale to the private sector or securitisation. Invited firms had until 23 August to submit their bids and BIS confirmed to Legal Business late on Friday 6 December that Hogan Lovells was ‘recently’ notified that it is the successful bidder.
Ashurst has lost a second senior partner in Germany as Nikolaus von Jacobs leaves to head up McDermott Will & Emery’s Munich private equity practice, citing a growing interest among US private equity funds in European investment opportunities.
Von Jacobs, who previously headed Ashurst’s local private equity team, specialises in venture capital, public and private M&A as well as private equity. One of his main clients is independent Luxembourg-based fund Palero Capital.
The former head of legal for The Times newspaper, Alastair Brett, has been suspended from practising for six months by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) for misleading a court and ‘failing to act with integrity’ in litigation over the naming of anonymous Nightjack police blogger Detective Richard Horton in 2009, an SRA statement confirmed this morning (6 December).
Brett was suspended yesterday (to take effect from 16 December) after the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) told the tribunal that in June 2009, while conducting litigation in the High Court on behalf of The Times, Brett ‘knowingly or recklessly allowed a witness statement to be served in support of its defence which created a misleading impression’.
‘Wragge & Co was the Mishcon of its day.’ That statement from a former veteran of the Midlands giant sums it up in many ways.
In the late 1990s Wragges wasn’t just the best law firm the English regions had bred, it was a firm that broke the rules. The mix of flair, quality lawyering and an ability to astutely break away from the herd had few if any direct comparisons at the time. Wragges had a recognition and respect in the City absent from most national and regional competitors. More than that, Wragges stood out from rivals and could quicken the professional pulse in a way that Mishcon de Reya does today.
Following a competitive tender process between five of its panel law firms, AIG has awarded its bulk contract work to Bond Dickinson, as the insurance giant’s general counsel for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Chris Newby focuses his team on more strategic, higher level legal work.
AIG concluded its main panel review in September, appointing a 25-strong list of advisers, including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Berwin Leighton Paisner and DLA Piper.
A secondary tendering process was conducted among five panel firms for the job of updating and modernising hundreds of medium risk, high-volume but low-value contracts with AIG’s providers.
Even at the top of the market, the slow march towards performance-driven pay for associates continues with Linklaters this week becoming the second top City player to unveil changes to its associate remuneration.
Linklaters is to introduce a performance-based element to salaries for its London-based associates with two years or more post-qualification experience (PQE) as part of what it dubs its ‘Our Deal’ strategy.
The City firm issued a somewhat obtuse statement over the move but the new model, which kicks in from 1 May 2014, is expected to see roughly 10% of pay handed out on the basis of individual merit past the two-year PQE point. An existing bonus scheme remains unchanged.
