With the UK’s investment in defence broadly flat British defence giant BAE Systems is looking increasingly to the international markets for growth and its legal team is morphing with it.
This month, BAE’s 250-strong legal team, which counts the company’s 100,000-plus employees as its clients, rolled out its UK cab rank model – under which a pool of lawyers is available on a first-come-first-served basis – to Asia and the Middle East.
With all eyes on Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) the news that corporate finance partner and global head of private equity Raymond McKeeve has left to join US firm Jones Day’s London office could, in many ways, not have come at a worse time.
Acknowledged by Legal 500 as ‘a leading private equity specialist’ McKeeve advises many of the leading private equity houses, including Blackstone Private Equity, Darwin Private Equity and KKR.
As British industrial technology firm Edwards Group is today (19 August) bought out for $1.6bn by Swedish engineering group Atlas Copco, it is notably being advised by the London office of Wall Street firms Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Davis Polk & Wardwell.
The Weil Gotshal team, which represented Edwards Group on its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange last May, is being led by London-based corporate partner Peter King, assisted by New York corporate partners David Blittner and Jackie Cohen.
Herbert Smith Freehills recent internal confidence that its run of post-merger exits had come to an end has been dashed after Friday (16 August) saw former Asia disputes head Gavin Lewis leave to join Linklaters.
A ‘solid and experienced litigator’, Lewis is ‘among the best in Hong Kong’ according to The Legal 500 and his departure is a blow to the firm in the wake of the exodus of other high profile litigators such as Ted Greeno to Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan earlier this year and Kevin Lloyd to Debevoise & Plimpton last year.
Further consolidation in the personal injury market looks set to take place next week after it emerged that acquisitive Australian-listed firm Slater & Gordon (S&G) is in talks with London and Manchester personal injury firm Fentons.
As first reported by RollOnFriday, S&G is expected to announce the deal on Tuesday (20 August). If the acquisition goes through it will nearly double S&G’s 146-lawyer UK arm, adding 120 lawyers, including 36 partners and 30 fee-earners.
As private practice firms including Allen & Overy downsize their trainee intakes the successful legal arm of Kent County Council has introduced its first trainee programme as it also unveils a significant increase in profitability.
As of September, Kent Legal Services (KLS) will take on five trainees as it moves to grow its business. The legal arm, which is unique among in-house departments for generating income as a result of offering its services to external county councils, yesterday announced a rise in 2012/13 profits of 20% from £2m to £2.4m and a 9% increase in turnover from £11m to £12m. This represents an improvement on last year’s performance, when profit increased by 18% to £2m while turnover was up 10% to £11m.
Allen & Overy’s (A&O) decision today (15 August) to reduce its trainee intake by 15% in 2015 will be closely watched by City rivals, many of which are also considering whether to cut their trainee numbers in light of diminishing newly-qualified (NQ) roles in the medium term.
The top five LB100 firm, which achieved a modest turnover growth of 1% this year to £1,189m, is cutting its trainee numbers from 100 to 90 in 2014, followed by a further drop to 85 in 2015. A statement from the firm said the decision was taken in order to ‘match [its] expectations of NQ jobs in the medium-term.’
With all eyes trained on Asia the office fall outs and launches have been throw into far sharper relief. Losing one former office head could be said to be an accident but DLA Piper’s loss in Singapore of its second former managing partner (MP), Matthew Glynn, is starting to look like trouble, after ex MP Martin David left in May to join Ince & Co. The departure also follows the resignation last August of disputes partner Justyn Jagger for local firm Stamford law.
Glynn, who led the Singapore office for a relatively short period between June 2011 and February this year, was also head of the firm’s Asia intellectual property and technology group.
Followers of the tussle between UK and US private equity practices for European mandates were this week rewarded with an instruction to both camps by leading buyout house CVC in its acquisitions of Domestic & General and Campbell Soup.
Advent International agreed earlier this week to sell extended warranty company Domestic & General (D&G) to CVC in a deal thought to be worth about $1.2bn, according to The New York Times, although this sum has not been officially disclosed.
Clifford Chance (CC) advised CVC, with a team led by Kem Ihenacho, co-head of the firm’s Africa practice and one of its private equity stars. He was assisted by M&A partner Brendan Moylan and insurance partner Hilary Evenett.
European corporates are showing greater reluctance than last year to tap into the debt capital markets but Royal Dutch Shell this week issued a triple-tranche $3.75bn bond with Slaughter and May; Cravath, Swaine & Moore and De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek at the helm.
Slaughter and May’s finance partner Matthew Tobin and tax partner William Watson led a team advising on the issue of five-year, ten-year and 30-year fixed rate notes, which were issued by Shell International Finance and guaranteed by Royal Dutch Shell, which plans to use the funds for general corporate purposes.
