Osborne Clarke is the latest top 50 firm to announce positive results for the first half (H1) of the 2013/14 financial year as it posts a 12% rise in group revenues to €71.6m, which includes the firm’s international offices, while the UK boasts an 8% increase to £39.1m.
The 500-lawyer firm, ranked as number 32 in the LB100, attributes the success of the group revenue in part to its 14th and 15th office openings in Brussels and Paris, which opened in June and July respectively.
The fallout from last year’s combination of Herbert Smith and Australia’s Freehills continues to rumble on, with news that HSF‘s Singapore office has been weakened by two senior departures.
Former Freehills Singapore managing partner John Dick has left the firm following corporate partner Geoffrey Grice’s move to Duane Morris & Selvan in Singapore.
Dick is named in The Legal 500 Asia-Pacific as a leading individual for projects and energy, while Brice joined Freehills in 2009 from the state solicitor’s office of Western Australia and has over 20 years’ experience advising on major projects and cross-border transactions in Europe and Asia Pacific.
Nabarro is to open an office in Dubai early next year following the Dubai government’s granting of a licence to the firm, in what will become its third international office.
Announced today (21 November), the new office will be led by construction and engineering head Terry Fleet, a former in-house lawyer at Costain, Babcock International and Trafalgar House (Cementation International). Further team members at partner and associate level will be added around the time of the launch.
Norton Rose Fulbright has made 30 staff redundant throughout its Australian offices, including 12 fee-earners and 18 support staff. The firm stated this was ‘not a change that is happening in any other region than Australia – it is a local response to a local market.’
A spokesperson for the firm added: ‘This was a difficult decision and we are doing all that we can to support those affected. Like other professional services firms in Australia, we have responded to changes in the local market. We will continue to concentrate on our primary areas of growth: financial institutions; energy; infrastructure, mining and commodities; transport; technology and innovation; and life sciences and healthcare.’
Partners are forecasting a further uptick in UK initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2014 with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer emerging as the latest major firm to win a role on a company looking for a London listing, as discount retailer Poundland puts together a team to advise it on the company’s next steps.
Poundland’s private equity owner Warburg Pincus – Freshfields’ client – has lined up financial advisers JP Morgan and Credit Suisse to look for a route to market. The deal is understood to be being led by Freshfields corporate partner Adrian Maguire, with the company currently valued at between £400-£500m and expected to float early next year. It is thought that Allen & Overy is advising the underwriters on the deal.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has boosted its nuclear energy capability with the hire of longstanding Norton Rose Fulbright energy partner and head of nuclear services Fiona Reilly, the third departure from the top 10 LB100 firm’s London office this month.
Reilly joined the now 2647-lawyer firm in January 1999, having previously worked in-house as commercial counsel at UK nuclear steam turbine producer Alstom.
During her time at Norton Rose Reilly, who became a partner in 2011, was seconded to Star Energy as its general counsel, advising on corporate and commercial issues.
Top-20 Legal Business 100 firm Simmons & Simmons has reported an 8% increase in revenues for the half year (H1) 2013/14, rising from £121m at this point last year to £130.7m.
The firm has reported improved performance across all practice groups. This represents a reversal in fortunes for the firm, who last year reported a 3% dip in revenues at the half-year stage, attributed at the time to problems in the Eurozone.
The revenues posted are also much stronger than the firm’s full 2012-13 results, which were broadly flat with a 1% dip to £250.3m, with profit per equity partner also staying more or less flat at £525,000.
The dividing line between private practice and public legal services providers is blurring again with Harrow and Barnet councils unveiling a new partnership with Bevan Brittan as the two local authorities become the first to apply for an alternative business structure (ABS) licence.
Harrow and Barnet councils, which came together in September last year to create HB Public Law (HBPL) and already provide services a small number of other local authorities, will work in a joint venture with Bevan Brittan to offer combined legal services to both existing and new public services clients, drawing on complementary resources from both sides.
The former Europe & Asia general counsel (GC) of global multimedia giant Thomson Reuters, Daragh Fagan, has resurfaced at UK-based support services company Rentokil Initial as group GC.
Following the merger of Thomson and Reuters in 2007, an $8.7bn deal that created the world’s largest provider of financial news and information, Fagan was appointed from legacy Reuters as GC for the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions, after joining from Italian energy group ENI in the summer of 2007.
Having been further appointed as GC for the Europe and Asia regions in January Fagan, a former Herbert Smith lawyer, departed the media giant in the summer and took up his new position at Rentokil, which offers a mix of services including pest control and workwear, in September.
One of the strongest intellectual property firms in the US, Washington DC-based Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner, has launched an office in the highly competitive London market in a bid to strengthen its European patent practice.
The launch follows the closure of the firm’s Brussels practice announced in August, which will officially shut down early next year once the logistics of transferring to London have been finalised.
Two partners have relocated from Brussels to London to set up shop at 16 Old Bailey – previously home to litigation shop Quinn Emanuel, while a further lateral hire is set to join in January 2014.
