Ashurst is a step closer to building out its European funds offering having today (22 June) received licence approval for a new Luxembourg office from the country’s Bar association.
Corporate partner Isabelle Lentz – currently head of the firm’s Luxembourg desk in London -will take the helm at the new outpost, which is set to open in October. Continue reading “Ashurst targets funds and Brexit business with Luxembourg launch”
This may be an issue dominated by all things Millennial, but I am past that, so the column that follows is likely the result of age-induced cynicism. But even by the standards of the legal industry, I find myself increasingly weary of what passes for industry commentary these days.
If an alien beamed down to earth and judged the profession through the lens of what the consultancy and the ‘thought leadership’ industries said about it, what would be the lessons they would take? The law is staffed by incompetent managers. Lawyers are uninterested in technology. General counsel (GCs) are the sole drivers of innovation and progress in the profession. The Big Four accountants are tearing through law. The legal industry faces an imminent structural collapse. I could go on and the purveyors of this certainly do. Continue reading “Comment: The good things the ‘pundits’ never tell you about the legal profession”
Business transactions regularly require a careful analysis from a competition law point of view. We at Prager Dreifuss have excellent expertise in advising and representing companies – small and large, local and global – as well as public entities in all aspects of competition law. With profound knowledge of Swiss and EU competition law, we regularly advise clients before the Swiss competition authorities, and frequently collaborate with foreign law firms in multi-jurisdictional cartel and merger proceedings, be it as team members or co-ordinators of international teams. Public procurement and state aid law also belong to our preferred areas of practice. Continue reading “Practice Area Spotlight: Competition and regulatory – leading experts and high-profile cases”
Never wanted to be a lawyer. I was persuaded to read law at Oxford by my school. I wanted to do history. Hated law at university. Wasted my time. I was lectured by the great and good but didn’t find it interesting. The one interesting course was on international trade, which was given by a guy called Francis Reynolds. Also a guy that tutored me at college, Peter Gross, who later became a Lord Justice of Appeal, they kindled that interest for me.
When I joined Holman Fenwick & Willan, as it was then known, my intention was to get my two years’ articles and do something else. Continue reading “Life during law: Richard Crump”
Pressure for business to ‘go green’ has been building steadily for 20 years. What started as a minority concern has steadily moved up the corporate agenda, as governments impose incentives and penalties to support green policies, while an increasingly informed consumer base votes with their wallets.
Yet one sector slow to rise to the challenge has been finance and financial services, for which the ordinary barriers to green thinking are more pronounced. Continue reading “Green investment – The colour of money”
LB: What was the background to the merger talks?
Therese Pritchard (TP): I started it. It’s my fault. In February of 2017, I was interested in strategic growth. So looking for a firm that had the same culture and practice areas that are successful or where they were interested in growing. I did some reading. I saw enough that looked interesting that it was worth a call to Lisa. One chat led to another and eventually we invited more partners to the discussions and decided this looked like a great fit. Continue reading “Eyes on ‘the prize’ – BCLP’s leaders on going all-in for transatlantic union”
Shortly before Richard Price went in-house as group general counsel (GC) and company secretary at Anglo American, the legal team’s headcount was cut in half. This was not coupled with a reduced workload, however. Expectations remained the same.
Quite a platform for Price, a former external adviser to the company as Shearman & Sterling’s co-head of mining and metals, to find his feet in-house after more than 20 years in private practice. Continue reading “Client profile: Richard Price, Anglo American”
Commitment. Marriage. Honeymoon. Divorce. Conversations about single-supplier legal advisory mandates are rife with relationship-strewn analogies.
While no two arrangements are the same, most begin with a commitment from a company and its in-house legal team to reduce external legal spend and get a better handle on its multitude of legal connections. Continue reading “Sole-adviser relationships: Commitment issues”
The decade since the fall of Lehman has seen some dramatic changes to the profession, not least law firms’ risk teams. Ten years since Legal Business first collaborated with broker Marsh to create our annual risk management and professional indemnity survey, progress has been made but the threats to the key players within the industry have become more ominous.
We gathered together leading risk experts from some of the UK and international firms most affected by increased regulatory scrutiny, geographical cohesion, data security and PR disasters to reflect on the evolution of law firm risk management and look ahead to see how the landscape could develop over the next ten years. Continue reading “The risk debate: Silver linings playbook”
Looking out of the window of his office overlooking the picturesque Piazza del Duomo on a rainy April afternoon, one veteran Milan partner is feeling sentimental: ‘I remember the firms that used to dominate the market back when I started – Graziadei, Carnelutti, Pavia Ansaldo. No-one hears of them anymore.’ What on the surface seems nostalgic reflection poses a pressing question for Italy’s current legal elite: what will become of today’s top independents in the near future?
‘It is as if the market gets tired of dominating firms every ten years or so and replaces them with others,’ agrees a partner in another office in the northern Italian city. Continue reading “The Euro Elite: Italy – And yet it moves”
One of the UK’s big six energy suppliers, EDF Energy, has nearly halved its external advisers in a bid to plug into ‘deeper’ relationships, while the addition of two new firms mirrors the refreshment seen elsewhere in the Co-operative Group’s revamped legal panel.
In late April, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang and Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) were added to EDF’s new panel of eight firms, which has been cut from the previous 14. Continue reading “Refreshing revamps: EDF and Co-op Group look to new firms in panel reviews”
A longstanding and well-respected member of the in-house community, Felix Ehrat has abruptly stepped down from his role as general counsel (GC) of Swiss healthcare giant Novartis after becoming entangled in a controversy involving US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.
Ehrat said in mid-May he would retire from Novartis shortly thereafter. He had been GC and a member of the executive committee at the Basel-based pharmaceuticals company since 2011, but was forced to admit ‘an error’ relating to an agreement between the company and Michael Cohen – Trump’s lawyer. Continue reading “Veteran Novartis GC Ehrat steps down over ‘error’ in Trump lawyer agreement”
Marco Cillario sizes up the pros and cons for legal advisers of the current ICO boom
‘We are in an odd position: we feel we need to be closely involved in this, but there is a reputational risk because there is a lot of fraud.’ Understandably, the partner expressing this view does not want himself or his firm identified. But such words still sum up many securities lawyers’ feelings on the hottest topic in their field for years. Continue reading “Focus: Wild West or new frontier? Securities counsel divided as the cryptocurrency ‘float’ rears its blockchained head”
Uncertainty seems to be the only thing lawyers working in Europe’s aviation sector can count on these days.
The recent collapse of two established major European airlines demonstrated the volatility facing many sections of the industry, with UK-headquartered Monarch Airlines and Air Berlin becoming the latest casualties of turbulence. Continue reading “Aviation focus: Winds of change”
Our cover feature this month largely speaks for itself in assessing the changing face of partnership as Millennials begin colonising the senior ranks of City law firms. Within five years, this group will be the driving force of elite commercial advisers.
Yet this column is not about the changing attitudes of youngish lawyers, more an issue that touches so many topics in the pages of this magazine, spanning remuneration, strategy, governance and talent. Quite simply, that is the success – and much more often failure – of leading law firms in balancing the interests of their younger ranks with their older partners. Continue reading “Yet unremarked, generational conflict cripples City law”
Legal Business’ Euro Elite comprises independent law firms based in more than 40 European jurisdictions, rather than the local offices of international firms.
To compile the 100 firms featured in this report Legal Business analysed more than 150 of the largest law firms in Europe by the number of lawyers, as well as more than 150 of the top-ranking firms in the current edition of The Legal 500 EMEA. A combined score was given for the size of the firm and its Legal 500 rankings, providing a qualitative as well as a quantitative analysis. The 100 firms with the highest combined score make The Euro Elite. Continue reading “The Euro Elite Methodology”
It would take a generous observer of Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) to claim the once sure-footed outfit had managed anything better than an indifferent run in the years preceding its union with Bryan Cave. Having dazzled through the 2000s – a period in which the firm seemed to have single-handedly revived the unfashionable notion of a City mid-tier – the last five years have been a stark contrast. Volatile financial performance, a disastrous run of partner recruitment and tension over its property-heavy direction – all in, it was unclear where the firm was going.
As such, confirmation earlier this year that BLP was uniting with a solid US operator, but one whose brand had limited potency in Europe, did not quicken the pulse. Continue reading “BCLP: A slightly better sales pitch than expected”
