Legal Business

DLA Piper boosts Hamburg outpost with team of 20

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Strategic recruitment Bird & BirdDLA Piper
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DLA Piper has added a team of 20, including five partners to its Hamburg office from Bird & Bird, in a move said to double the outpost in size. 

The hires include media and competition lawyer Stefan Engels and trademark and design practitioner Ulrike Grübler who join the firm’s Intellectual Property and Technology (IPT) practice group.

Bird & Bird partner and regulatory law specialist Michael Stulz-Herrnstad joins the litigation & regulatory practice group.

Joining the firm’s corporate team is partner Jörg Paura who has particular expertise in the steel, automotive and media industries and partner Daniel Weiß, who focuses on media, aviation and steel.

Also joining the IPT team are experienced media and competition lawyers Beatrice Brunn and Verena Haisch, and Verena Grentzenberg, who specialises in data protection law. Counsel Mirjam Rüve willl also move to DLA Piper, contributing expertise in corporate litigation and insolvency law.

DLA Piper’s managing partners for Germany Bernd Borgmann and Benjamin Parameswaran said: ‘DLA Piper continues its systematic growth. The addition of this large and market-leading team is a significant reinforcement for our German practice and the Hamburg office.’

The firm’s total fee earner headcount of the firm in Germany will be about 200 lawyers after the hire, with the Hamburg office believed to have doubled in size.

victoria.young@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Bird & Bird’s turnover climbs 6% to €325.5m but stays flat in sterling

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Financial results 2014/15 Bird & Bird
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Tech specialist Bird & Bird, despite stating that it has faced ‘challenging economic conditions in many of our major markets’, has posted a 6% rise in revenues to hit €325.5m.

The firm stated that in sterling terms turnover was flat on last year when it pulled in £259m. Bird & Bird has not released its profit figures for the 2014/15 financial year, but has undergone rapid expansion in the past year as it spent to reposition itself internationally.

In the 12 months to 30 April, Bird & Bird established an Australian practice by merging with Sydney-based Truman Hoyle and signed cooperation agreements with three foreign firms. The tech firm tied-up with two Indonesian firms, intellectual property specialists K&K Advocates and business law firm Nurjadin Sumono Mulyadi & Partners, and Turkish IT and telecoms boutique BTS & Partners in June.

Those moves followed similar agreements signed in recent years including in Korea with Seoul-based Hwang Mok & Park, in China with Beijing-based Lawjay Partners and in Malaysia with Tay & Partners.

Accounts filled at Companies House showed profits at the LLP fell 5% in 2013/14 from €60.3m to €57.1m as staffing costs rose. While turnover was stated as €309m in the year to 30 April 2014.

The firm said in a statement: ‘This is a solid performance across the firm, in the face of challenging economic conditions in many of our major markets. We have also seen strong growth in our traditional technology-driven sectors as well as in the growing number of other sectors in which technology and disruptive innovation are increasingly important.’

tom.moore@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Bird & Bird loses £1.8m professional negligence case over planning report

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Litigation Bird & Bird
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Bird & Bird has lost a professional negligence dispute taken by former client and offshore company Orientfield Holdings at London’s High Court and been ordered to pay out £1.8m in damages plus interest.

The dispute arose when in 2010 Orientfield instructed Bird & Bird for its purchase of a large residential property in St John’s Wood for £25 million, which was later bought by media executive Elisabeth Murdoch. However, the court found that the solicitors failed to advise Orientfield of a proposed development close to the property which would have negatively affected its intended use.

Bird & Bird had obtained a planning report for the property which revealed the existence of such developments but, unaware of this, Orientfield signed a contract to buy the property, paying a deposit of £2.5m. Upon learning of the development it terminated the contract and the vendors of the property brought a claim against Orientfield to retain the deposit, which was settled with the latter recovering half of the monies. Orientfield then brought a claim against Bird & Bird to recoup the balance of its deposit and other costs associated with the legal action brought by the vendors.

Bird & Bird argued that it was not under any duty to provide the report and therefore there had not been any negligence. However, Judge Mark Pelling QC held that the firm failed to provide Orientfield with the planning report and confirmed it was the duty of Bird & Bird to inform Orientfield of its content.

Bird & Bird said in a statement: ‘We are disappointed with the result but we’re discussing with our insurers the possibility of an appeal.’

Wedlake Bell partner David Golten advised the claimant while Bird & Bird was represented by Triton Global director Michael Robin.

Commenting on the case, Golten said: ‘We are thrilled that Orientfield has been successful and it is a well-deserved result. Clients rightly expect and should have professional advisors who act diligently to protect their interests. It has been a hard fought claim, and it is excellent that all of Orientfield’s loss has been recovered, including its legal costs.’

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Launching in Luxembourg: Bird & Bird targets Unified Patent Court work with new office

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Europe Bird & Bird
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Bird & Bird has made an application to open in Luxembourg as it targets work heading to the new European Unified Patent Court (UPC).

The office will be number 28 for the firm and will also look to service both work regarding the Court of Justice of the European Union and, banking and finance clients based in the country.

The new court is being established by the European Patent Office and 25 countries including the UK, France and Germany but not Italy and Spain. A Preparatory Committee is currently holding a series of meeting to establish the Court’s rules and administrative procedures.

Chief executive of Bird & Bird, David Kerr, said: ‘Luxembourg is an important jurisdiction for the UPC and many of our IP clients, as well as for many of our financial services and tax clients, so opening an office in Luxembourg makes perfect sense for us.’

Morag Macdonald, joint head of the firm’s international Intellectual Property group, added: ‘The establishment of the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court represents the largest change to patent law across Europe in 40 years.’

Bird & Bird has been in expansion mode over recent months announcing a merger with Truman Hoyle to establish a presence in Australia at the end of last year. The move added 25 lawyers to the firm including eight partners and is being led by Shane Barber.

Meanwhile, in November last year, Simmons & Simmons also announced it was looking to establish a Luxembourg office. The five-partner outpost, managed by Stéphane Ober, is being targeted at asset management and financial institutions.

michael.west@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Revolving doors: European hires as HSF recruits in Germany and Bird & Bird focuses on Denmark while Ogier hires from Kirkland

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Strategic recruitment Bird & BirdHerbert Smith FreehillsOgier
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King & Wood Mallesons real estate team hire from Eversheds may have made the headlines last week, but there were plenty of notable hires elsewhere. Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) bolstered its Frankfurt office which it launched in 2013 with a finance partner from K&L Gates while Bird & Bird welcomed a new partner in Denmark and Ogier added to its dispute resolution team in the Cayman Islands with a hire from Kirkland & Ellis’ London office.

Julia Mueller joined HSF’s Frankfurt office as its ninth lateral since opening in the city in April 2013. She is dual qualified in English and German law and specialises in corporate, leveraged and acquisition finance. Before joining K&L Gates in May 2012 she had worked at White & Case, helping to establish its acquisition finance group in Germany and before then was at Allen & Overy.

Ralf Thaeter, HSF’s German head, said: ‘Germany is a very important market for the firm and in Julia we have recruited someone with the reputation, quality and experience that will enable us to build the high quality finance practice we need to continue to compete for high value cross-border and domestic transactional work.’

Also in Europe, Bird & Bird boosted its corporate and M&A practice in Denmark, with the hire of Morton Brehm Jensen from Delacour, who specialises in company and tax law.

Meanwhile, Ogier has appointed Kirkland & Ellis’ Ulrich Payne as a partner in its Cayman Islands dispute resolution team. Payne, who also previously worked at Simmons & Simmons and Hogan Llovells, joins from Kirkland’s London office. His background is in international disputes, usually with a financial aspect, and has worked in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium, and has advised on disputes in Russia, the Middle East and the US.

Payne has joined Ogier’s Cayman Islands team which is led by partner Rachael Reynolds. Reynolds said: ‘Ulrich is a great addition to the team. His practice as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis focused on complex international financial disputes and arbitration, and he has many years’ experience advising banks and other financial institutions, accountants and high net worth individuals on complex financial products and transactional issues. The Cayman Dispute Resolution team is in an expansion phase and Ulrich’s appointment further strengthens our offering, particularly in the area of complex financial services litigation.’

Meanwhile at home, DAC Beachcroft bolstered its professional liability team in Bristol, while Leigh Day boosted its Manchester team with a hire from Irwin Mitchell.

Pensions specialist Rebecca Smith joins DAC from RPC, where she was a legal director, prior to that she was a partner with CMS Cameron McKenna. Smith primarily acts for pension trustees and administrators, benefit consultants and actuaries, and will be based in Bristol.

Further north, claimant law firm Leigh Day has appointed industrial diseases partner Helen Ashton to its Manchester team. Aston joins from Irwin Mitchell’s London office where she has more than 15-years’ experience.

kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Placed in the ‘bad bank’: Quinn Emanuel, Akin Gump and Bird & Bird lead on $835m Espirito loan dispute

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Litigation Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & FeldBird & BirdQuinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
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Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Bird & Bird have been gifted lead instructions in two separate suits by Goldman Sachs and a group of investors on an $835m loan repayment dispute taken against Pinsent Masons’ client Portuguese bank Novo Banco at London’s High Court.

Quinn Emanuel’s London co-managing partner Richard East and Akin Gump restructuring specialist James Roome have been instructed on the first investor/lender suit, while local counsel is being provided by PLMJ’s head of banking and finance Hugh Rosa Ferreira. Meanwhile, Bird & Bird’s London disputes head Steven Baker was selected by Goldman Sachs to represent the investment bank in the second case.

Pinsent Masons is representing Novo Banco in the dispute with a team including partner Stuart McNeill and national head of banking and finance litigation Michael Isaacs.

The disputes relate to a special purpose vehicle, Oak Finance Luxembourg, which was created by Goldman Sachs to raise funds for Banco Espirito Santo (BES), a Portuguese bank based in Lisbon, for the purpose of financing an oil refinery in Venezuela.

However, in August 2014, Portugal’s central bank announced a €4.4bn bailout of BES that brought about its split into two banks: Novo Banco, which kept healthy operations, and a remaining ‘bad bank’ to keep toxic assets. As a result creditors, including the claimants whose loans were not transferred to the healthy bank, are expected to face significant losses and the loan unlikely to be repaid.

The first suit, which comprises 12 claimants including businessman Paul Singer’s hedge fund Elliott International, argues that the Bank of Portugal’s subsequent decision in December 2014 not to transfer the Oak Finance loan to Novo Banco was ‘based on incomplete and inaccurate information’.

It further added: ‘The Oak Finance investors do not accept that the Bank of Portugal had any legal grounds justifying the December 2014 decision. Although the Bank of Portugal has since been provided with facts that would require it to reverse its December decision, the Bank has refused to do so, instead referring these matters to be determined by a court.’

Damages claimed in the first suit between all 12 claimants total around $613m. Details about the Goldman Sachs suit have not yet been released by the London court.

Firms which last year landed high profile instructions on the break-up of the troubled Portuguese lender included Linklaters and Allen & Overy, with the former acting for BES and Novo Banco and the latter instructed by the central bank.

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Branching out: RPC, Eversheds and Bird & Bird create new consultancy offerings

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Innovation Bird & BirdEversheds SutherlandRPC
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The recent push by major UK firms into non-legal services looks set to continue, with Bird & Bird and RPC both unveiling moves into non-legal consultancy, while Eversheds further expands its pioneering service.

Sticking with its technology, media and telecoms specialism, Bird & Bird in February established an IT project consultancy, Baseline, in a joint venture with Lancashire-based ASE Consulting. The endeavour sees partners, led by co-head of Bird & Bird’s transformational project team Dominic Cook, invest their own capital in the project, with the team agreeing to pass legal work back to the firm.

Legal Business

‘A more comprehensive solution’: Bird & Bird creates IT consultancy

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Innovation Bird & Bird
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Partners at Bird & Bird have joined the rush to expand into consultancy work, launching an IT project consultancy Baseline in a joint venture with Lancashire-based ASE Consulting.

The partners, led by co-head of Bird & Bird’s transformational project team Dominic Cook, have invested their own capital in the project and have struck a deal to pass legal work back to the firm.

Baseline, which has an international remit, will initially focus on supporting challenging IT projects by providing support for legal, financial, commercial, technical and management skills aspects. The venture will help review, recommend and resolve issues holding companies back and also assist in the initial planning, design and procurement phases of communications projects.

Cook, who is instructed on BT’s multi-billion pound IT contract for the NHS, has been a partner at Bird & Bird for 18 years and is also an associate fellow of the Oxford Saïd Business School. He said the new business venture ‘will focus on delivering for organisations that are crying out for more effective one-stop, multi-disciplinary support’.

ASE consulting director Robin O’Connor added: ‘By combining Bird & Bird’s approach with our own highly developed change management techniques, we believe we can deliver a new, integrated service that will be a much more effective solution to the challenges faced.’

Bird & Bird’s move follows those made by Eversheds to expand its consulting arm into financial services regulatory compliance work and RPC’s hire of Rory O’Brien to establish a new management consultancy business.

David Kerr, chief executive of Bird & Bird, said ‘Clients are increasingly requiring us to deliver our legal services in new ways and we have to think of innovative approaches to meet that demand. Baseline is an excellent example of how, we can be part of a more comprehensive solution for clients. That helps our clients and means we will be able to attract more high quality legal work, so it is a really significant step forward for the firm.’

tom.moore@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Financials 2013/14: Bird & Bird LLP accounts show fall in profits as firm ramps up headcount

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Financial results 2013/14 Bird & Bird
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Bird & Bird’s latest limited liability partnership (LLP) accounts show turnover at the firm grew 5% from €293m to just under €309m in the year to 30 April 2014, but that profit at the LLP was down 5% from €60.3m to €57.1m as staffing costs rose.

The firm’s net current assets on its consolidated balance sheet also dropped 15% from just under €108m in 2013 to just over €91m as the amount owed to creditors due within one year rose from €62m to €89m. Similarly, the firm’s net current assets on its LLP balance sheet fell from over €82m down to €65m.

Staff costs at the firm went up 10% from €128m to €142m while overall salaries at the firm grew from just under €105m to €115m while other expenses associated to staff costs also increased by a huge 40%. The rise was driven by the average number of persons (excluding partners) employed by the firm going up 9% with fee-earner headcount growing from 856 in 2013 to 926 in 2014, and support heads increasing from 738 to 806.

The average number of partners, in comparison, was roughly the same at 233 in 2014, but the highest paid partner received €911,000 – considerably less than in 2013 when the highest paid took home just over €1m.

Around this time last year, Bird & Bird’s turnover was up 8% to €293m from €270m the previous year, while profit was down 7% from nearly €65m in 2012 to €60.3m in 2013.

The tech-centric firm recently committed to a pre-let that will see it pay £8.28m a year to lease 12/14 New Fetter Lane. The agreement, which weighs in at £58.11 per sq ft, makes the annual cost of the property worth 38% of Bird & Bird’s current leasehold expenditure globally.

The firm also restructured its debt last year with Paul Colvin, chief financial officer at Bird & Bird saying to Legal Business: ‘We have always been very proud of the fact that we have a conservative approach to our finances, and a number of recent high profile cases have shown that approach was sensible.’

Colvin added: ‘However, the value of ensuring we have a strong balance sheet and a very transparent position on our liabilities – for example by ensuring we do not have “off-balance sheet borrowing” – really shone through during our discussions earlier this year about restructuring our finances. We had a wide choice of banks who were keen to support us and the end result is a very substantial saving for the firm, so we are delighted!’

jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

£58.11 per sq ft: Bird & Bird loses major patent litigator as it commits to £8.3m annual rent bill

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Strategic recruitment Baker BottsBird & Bird
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Mark Heaney, who heads Bird & Bird’s highly regarded electronics sector group, is leaving for US firm Baker Botts at the end of the year.

Heaney, who started at DLA Piper before being offered partnership in Bird & Bird’s intellectual property group in 2000, has resigned from the firm and will depart at the end of 2014. A handover process is currently in place.

He will become the fourteenth Baker Botts partner in London, which, like its practice in the US, is heavily focused on the energy and gas sector.

A patent litigator by trade, Heaney has been involved in big ticket electronics disputes including Alcatel v Marconi, Halliburton v Smith International and Storage Computer v Hitachi. Heaney successfully defended Microsoft last year after Motorola claimed the software giant had infringed a patent for email synchronisation technology. The England & Wales Court of Appeal found the patent invalid on the ground of obviousness.

He is also the second major patent litigator to leave Bird & Bird for a US firm in the last 18 months, with the firm’s co-head of life sciences Trevor Cook having departed for Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.

The tech-centric firm recently committed to a pre-let that will see it pay £8.28m a year to lease 12/14 New Fetter Lane. The agreement, which weighs in at £58.11 per sq ft, makes the annual cost of the property worth 38% of Bird & Bird’s current leasehold expenditure globally. In 2013/14 the firm paid £21.5m in rent.

Last year, CMS Cameron McKenna agreed a move to cannon place for £42 per sq ft and one managing partner said that Bird & Bird’s deal ‘seems a little high’.

A spokesperson for Bird & Bird said: ‘We have not decided on the outcome of our other three buildings in London but have flexible terms in place whereby we can assess growth levels at a later date.’

tom.moore@legalease.co.uk