OC joins Magic Circle on Dixons Carphone tie-up

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Carphone Warehouse and Dixons merge along with DEMB and Mondelez

Major M&A mandates have over the past month seen Linklaters, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Osborne Clarke (OC) secure roles on the £3.6bn merger of Carphone Warehouse and Dixons Retail, as Clifford Chance (CC) and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom led on the $7bn merger of the coffee businesses of Kraft Foods spin-off Mondelēz International and DE Master Blenders 1753 (DEMB).

UK top-40 firm OC capitalised on its longstanding relationship with Carphone Warehouse to secure a role on its May merger with Dixons, which also owns Currys and PC World. Corporate partner Jonathan King led for OC and told Legal Business: ‘Any merger of this size is complicated when you’re dealing with two FTSE 250 companies coming together.’

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Asia-Pacific: Taylor Wessing launches in South Korea with local tie-up

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Taylor Wessing last month became the latest international firm to set up in South Korea, establishing an association with local full-service firm DR & AJU International Law Group.

Founded in 1994 and one of the region’s ten largest law firms, DR & AJU will add 120 lawyers, including 18 partners, to Taylor Wessing’s international reach. The Seoul-headquartered firm also provides offices across Russia, Kazakhstan and Singapore, and services in M&A, litigation and various corporate matters.

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Hogan Lovells second global firm to exit Prague in a month

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Transatlantic firm Hogan Lovells has become the second top-ten Legal Business 100 firm in recent weeks to announce it is withdrawing from Prague, blaming difficult market conditions.

Following a ‘strategic review of the market’ undertaken by the international management committee, the firm is aiming to complete its exit from Prague over the summer, with the exact date still to be decided.

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Clyde & Co to launch in South Africa with Webber Wentzel hires

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Clyde & Co has launched two offices in South Africa with the hire of a four-partner team from Linklaters’ local ally, Webber Wentzel.

The new offices will be based in Cape Town and Johannesburg, headed by Daniel Le Roux, who currently heads Webber Wentzel’s insurance and legal liability practice.

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‘The right to be forgotten’: Cleary client Google dealt a blow by ECJ’s privacy ruling

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Decision contradicts EU advocate general’s previous non-binding guidance.

After years of attempts by Brussels to tighten up Europe’s data privacy rules in the face of US lobbying, in May the European Court of Justice (ECJ) achieved that effect by backing a ‘right to be forgotten’ against Google, in a blow for the search engine and advisers Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

The court in Luxembourg found that in certain circumstances individuals can request that operators remove the links that appear during searches of their name, meaning Google will now need to set up a technical solution to a potential minefield of requests.

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Clyde & Co whistleblower case sees Supreme Court hand partners protection

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Partners who expose malpractice in their own law firm will now be protected by whistleblower legislation, the Supreme Court ruled on 21 May, in a precedent-setting judgment that follows a claim brought by former Clyde & Co partner Krista Bates van Winkelhof.

The Supreme Court held – overturning a Court of Appeal finding in 2012 – that members of limited liability partnerships are ‘workers’ for the purpose of employment legislation and therefore have the same protections as employees if they have ‘blown the whistle’ at work.

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Barclays’ Americas chief Michael Crowl set to join UBS

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Barclays’ high-profile managing director and general counsel (GC) for the Americas, Michael Crowl, is to head UBS’ US wealth management division, replacing former permanent head Jonathan Eisenberg, who returned to K&L Gates earlier this year.

A spokesperson for Barclays last month confirmed the bank has, until a permanent replacement is announced, put in place two interim heads: New York-based Kevin Genirs and Marcelo Riffaud.

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Sainsbury’s unveils new panel as Lloyds appoints insurance GC

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Significant in-house announcements in May saw King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin and TLT awarded first-time spots on Sainsbury’s panel, while Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) appointed RSM Tenon’s former group general counsel (GC) Joanne Jolly to lead its insurance group.

Sainsbury’s recently concluded the third review of what it calls its ‘legal community’: a 12-strong collaborative law firm panel, which saw reappointments for Addleshaw Goddard; Bond Dickinson; CMS Cameron McKenna; Croner; Dentons; DWF; Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co; Linklaters; Shepherd and Wedderburn; and Winckworth Sherwood.

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Life During Law: Nilufer von Bismarck

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There were different challenges during the downturn, you had to look to different markets. Challenges are always there and you are always after that next deal or that new client. I don’t think you could be here for 24 years without still being ambitious for that.

Working on the bailout was very intense – almost surreal, sitting in the Treasury trying to figure out how best it should be done. There was a deadline for having to announce something before the markets opened on the Monday. We all started on Saturday morning and worked all the way through to Monday morning. There were three banks we were looking at: RBS, Lloyds and HBOS, and then the Lloyds/HBOS combination. Each had a different thing to think about, they all had their own lawyers so there were three sets of documentation. The challenges faced and the creativity needed to get that off the ground were a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

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Worth the money: Barclays to introduce value accounts for upcoming legal panel

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Failure to meet value targets set to result in firms partially refunding banking giant

As Barclays’ long-awaited review of its global legal panel moves closer to completion, it has emerged that the bank is set to shake up how it interacts with its external advisers with the introduction of corporate value accounts.

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