Senior legal figures provide their take on how the market will shape up over the next 25 years
RISE OF THE ACCOUNTANTS
‘The Big Four are challenging and will be one of the competitive threats over the next five years as they have tremendous resource, access to businesses and more sophisticated models than law firms.’
Roger Parker, EMEA managing partner, Reed Smith
The rise of boutiques has been yet another development shaping the legal industry that no-one predicted. Conventional wisdom for years held that law firms should go global or specialise but that was largely in the context of mid-tier players becoming more tightly defined around a handful of profitable practice areas (which pretty much hasn’t happened either).
What we have seen instead – as we address this month – is a flourishing of highly specialised and lean law firms launched or expanded since the financial crisis reshaped the market. Obviously, much of this is due to the post-
Continue reading “Legal boutiques: unheralded, thriving and coming after your lunch”
The in-house profession has doubled in size in the UK over the last 15 years and gained once unthinkable levels of influence in delivering legal services to corporate Britain. And what have the profession and its watchdogs done to recognise that seismic shift in the legal industry, with all its far-reaching ethical implications? Pretty much nothing.
As Legal Business reported last month, a band of academics and in-house veterans are trying to fill this void with the report, ‘Legal Risk: Definition, Management and Ethics’, billed as the start of a wider conversation around the ethical standards and framework that in-house counsel employ.
On 7 May the nation faces one of the most unpredictable elections in recent history and one with high stakes given the issues on the table, including a potential EU exit, the break-up of the UK, big decisions on austerity and public finances and fundamental electoral reform.
The profession – like the City, like the electorate – largely doesn’t know what to make of it. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be wrestling with the implications of the 30-year journey of the UK from dual-party elective dictatorship to multi-party horse-trading and a series of disruptions to the UK’s constitutional arrangements since the early 1990s – disruptions that have often had unintended consequences.
Continue reading “Politics has changed – a high-stakes election for the nation and the City”
Travers Smith’s Paul Dolman argues a reviving buyout industry will increasingly drive European deal markets
2014 was a year that saw the number and value of private equity (PE)-backed exits reach unparalleled highs globally. More benevolent economic and market conditions, including an increase in global M&A activity, created renewed confidence in the industry. With a mountain of dry powder to deploy – that’s unused equity in the industry slang – and more debt funding available than has been the case for years (and on more favourable terms), PE firms have been very busy looking for new investment opportunities. This has resulted in fierce competition for any high-quality assets that come to market. Coupled with the continued high valuations of comparable companies on the public markets and near-zero interest rates, this has inflated valuations and resulted in the purchase-price multiples for leveraged buyouts in Europe reaching an average of ten times EBITDA – highs not seen since the peak of the last cycle.
Stephenson Harwood’s Tony Woodcock argues that financial regulation has failed to clarify the status of in-house counsel
Though one is always on dangerous ground in suggesting that anything was clear or uncomplicated in the Financial Services Authority’s Handbook and its successors, one could comfortably say that in-house lawyers were not regarded as significant influence function-holders requiring approval under the Financial Services and Markets Act (FSMA) 2000. They were not specifically named as holders of a ‘controlled function’ and would not be regarded as holders of a ‘significant management function’, the characterisation of which required a person to be a ‘senior manager’ of a significant business unit reporting directly to the governing body or the chief executive or the equivalent. The in-house lawyer’s role was not managerial and supervisory, but advisory and privileged.
Continue reading “Policing the City – where do in-house lawyers fit in?”
Baker & McKenzie’s Jonathan Walsh charts the quiet rehabilitation of asset-backed lending
Securitisation has taken a battering in recent years. A complex financing technique, little understood by the public, it was an easy scapegoat as a principal cause of the global financial crisis. For a while after the crisis it seemed as if various supervisory authorities would regulate it to the point of extinction.
Thankfully, that did not happen. But over the past six or seven years (depending on when you think the financial crisis actually hit) rules aimed at stifling the securitisation market have been pumped out on both sides of the Atlantic. We have had rules on bank capital, rating agencies, investors and more. The additional regulations are complex, in some cases contradictory, and affect all aspects of securitisation transactions and the parties involved in such transactions.
HSF fraud veteran Robert Hunter on how smart teams can make bad decisions
Many admire John Kennedy and his advisers’ deft handling of the Cuban missile crisis. It is generally thought to result from some of the best-judged decisions of the era. Yet a year earlier, much the same group of people decided to support the Bay of Pigs invasion (a crackpot scheme for the invasion of Cuba in which the US pitted 1,600 men against 200,000), conversely thought of as one of the most idiotic.
Continue reading “‘A curious atmosphere of consensus’ – the dangers of groupthink”
As the UK heads to the polls for the general election, senior legal figures provide their views on the current mood in the City.
TAXING ISSUE
‘There is an undercurrent of disenchantment. People have gone through a period when living standards have been static or have even fallen in real terms. They are upset and worried about the future. They are worried about the future of the economy, the health service and what’s going to happen with education, and why their children can’t afford a house. But saying we will introduce a mansion tax is not the answer.’
David Ereira, finance partner, Linklaters
A long, long time ago when I used to report on fund management, one of the defining figures was Tony Dye, then the chief investment officer of Phillips & Drew, one of the City’s most storied asset management houses.
Dye earned himself the nickname ‘Dr Doom’ through his bearish stance on equities, in particular by making the case that global stock markets were overvalued as the 1990s wore on. By the end of that decade, there were a growing number sharing that conviction as the dot-com mania and a takeover boom hiked valuations. But Dye made the case as early as 1995, years before the market turned.
Continue reading “Being right in real life is much harder than being right intellectually”
