Darren Jones discusses leaving his role at telecoms giant BT to sit in the UK Parliament
Many were surprised when Darren Jones was elected Labour MP for Bristol North West – none more so than Jones himself. Except for, perhaps, his boss at BT Legal.
Pride before a fall. Everything was going well when the world’s first listed law firm, Slater and Gordon, announced another blockbuster UK buyout in early 2015.
‘In getting to this point, we undertook a very extensive due diligence process,’ said the firm’s managing director, Andrew Grech. ‘The business we are buying is of high quality with robust infrastructure and systems, and good people. This move will accelerate and consolidate our position in the UK market, and bring benefits to the clients and staff of both businesses.’
Continue reading “The Icarus syndrome – the highs and lows of Slater and Gordon”
Disruption looms as James Wood reports on first European conference for CLOC
Richard Susskind must have lost count of the number of times he has spoken about the future of law, but in his introductory remarks to the 2018 CLOC EMEA Institute gathering in London he seemed cheerfully off balance. Many of the concepts Susskind has prophesied are now realities at large US companies and even sceptics would concede that the emergence of sophisticated legal operations teams feels like a decisive shift for the industry.
It has been an expansive start of the year in terms of partner hires for a group of finance-focused US shops with tight London operations.
First Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft’s City restructuring practice was decimated by the departure of four partners to Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, led by global financial restructuring co-chair Yushan Ng, with Jacqueline Ingram, Karen McMaster and Sinjini Saha following him. McMaster and Ingram had already followed Ng in changing firms in 2013 from Linklaters, where they were associates. Saha was made partner when she joined Cadwalader from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in 2015.
Continue reading “Cadwalader takes multiple hits in London as Milbank and Brown Rudnick swoop in”
Nathalie Tidman assesses the fallout as M&A veteran quits an unsettled City giant
Even for a market grown blithe to big-name M&A partners quitting for the dollar, Kirkland & Ellis’s recruitment of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s David Higgins just before Christmas sent a jolt. Continue reading “Can Freshfields limit the damage as Kirkland tempts PE heavyweight with $10m transfer?”
It has been the question raised over wine by many seasoned litigators for months now: what’s going on at Enyo Law? At the beginning of last year, the litigation boutique hit the headlines thanks to surprise merger talks with fellow disputes specialist Stewarts Law, but since the discussion was abandoned the influential outfit has gone to ground.
Formed by ex-Addleshaw Goddard partners Simon Twigden (pictured), Pietro Marino and Michael Green, Enyo was launched in 2010 with a post-Lehman preoccupation of litigating against banks. The concept was simple: pick up the big-ticket work that larger firms were conflicted out of. Continue reading “Disputes Eye: Enyo goes to ground – what next for the pioneering disputes shop?”
1998 seems like a lifetime ago, where e-commerce was a fantasy for ordinary people just discovering the internet. Yet 1998 was year zero for the European Union’s Data Protection Directive – the basis for legislation protecting personal data across member states today.
But over the past two decades, digitalisation has detonated a data explosion, giving rise to data mining on a level of sophistication and scale that was unthinkable at the time the directive was conceived. In keeping with the spirit of our globalised age, data, like everything else, is ‘big’ – and so are the threats.
‘You will have to go out and find the women – they won’t come to you,’ warns Travers Smith partner Lucie Cawood when Legal Business began researching this cover feature. That proved an astute prediction.
Searching for senior female talent in the City, amid weeks spent amassing nearly 60 interviews with partners, law firm leaders, corporate heads and recruiters, it becomes clear that it takes more work to get women deal lawyers talking than their male equivalents. A lot more. Continue reading “Alphas – the hunt for female deal stars (and why it’s hard to be a City woman)”
Anecdotally, in-house budgets are being scrutinised like never before, and law firm billing is starting to catch the attention of chief financial officers.
As almost any general counsel (GC) will tell you, legal teams are coming under sustained pressure to introduce metrics and benchmarks, along with more robust financial management and project management tools, to help demonstrate their grasp on value. In short, procurement methodologies are now being applied to legal services. Continue reading “Client Intelligence Report: Data view – Big talk on legal ops fails to change buying habits”
Linklaters’ head of corporate Aedamar Comiskey (pictured above) stands as one of the few female heavyweights in public M&A. The former senior partner contender has established herself as a substantial business generator, acting as Linklaters’ relationship partner for key clients including Aviva and HSBC. With many of her clients selling businesses of late, she recently worked on John Wood Group’s £2.2bn takeover of Amec Foster Wheeler and Visa Europe’s €21.2bn sale to Visa.
‘She’s so dynamic and successful.’
‘She is technically very strong and does a good job of balancing the transactional side and the management stuff,’ notes Ashurst’s Karen Davies, one of more than a dozen peers to laud the Linklaters veteran. Despite fielding the full portfolio of skills, Comiskey wears her status lightly. ‘Aedamar is so successful and dynamic and has balanced her roles with her family life for many years,’ says senior partner Charlie Jacobs. ‘A great role model.’
In a firm with a strong roster of female partners, arguably the other standout M&A name is Jessamy Gallagher, who co-heads the firm’s infrastructure group. Major work includes in 2017 advising National Grid on the sale of a majority stake in its £13.8bn UK gas pipe network. Says Jacobs: ‘She is a real force and the sky is the limit.’ Also cited is Tracey Lochhead, who has acted on substantive matters for Glencore, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Investec and Absa Group, not to mention developing Linklaters’ relationship with sponsor Cerberus.
While US-bred firms have made huge inroads in the City they still have a poor record in fostering female partners in M&A. The most striking exception remains Sullivan & Cromwell’s Vanessa Blackmore, who has sustained an enviable run of premium work spanning M&A, restructuring and equity capital markets across Allen & Overy and then Sullivan & Cromwell, which she joined in 2006. A heavily-edited list of clients over the years includes Credit Suisse, Anglo American, Liberty International and Cable & Wireless.
One of the few female M&A heavyweights to have changed firms, Blackmore received multiple citations. Fox Rodney Search managing director Siobhán Lewington sums up: ‘There aren’t many like her.’
Firm but fair. But mainly firm.
With the much-admired Frances Murphy sadly passing away in 2016, Nilufer von Bismarck stands as the dominant female operator in the City’s best M&A team. The corporate and equity capital markets veteran has sustained a robust practice across more than 25 years in the City. ‘Technically very strong – formidable and brilliant,’ notes one of many peers to highlight her work.
Von Bismarck has handled work for a string of corporates over the years, including substantive work for the UK Green Investment Bank, Lagardère and Investec. However, she remains best known for a leading role in the Slaughter and May team advising the Treasury on a series of high-stakes interventions in the banking markets amid the financial crisis, the kind of work that this year saw her awarded an OBE. Tactically astute, her old adversary Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s Will Lawes would respond to being boxed in by the Slaughters partner during negotiations: ‘We’ve been Nilufered.’ She’s firm but fair. But mainly firm. A class act.
Von Bismarck herself cites Rebecca Cousin – who co-heads the firm’s data protection and privacy group and has handled big-ticket work for Royal Dutch Shell, Reckitt Benckiser and Royal Mail. Of Slaughters’ junior partners, Victoria MacDuff, who was made up in 2016, is already very strongly tipped. Sally Wokes is another partner to watch.
The boys’ club of Ashurst’s corporate team was certainly not, historically at least, kind to women – which gives extra credit to Karen Davies’ tenacity. One old-school alumni pledged to ‘never speak to Legal Business again’ if we included Davies in our list. But having thoroughly kicked the tyres on her work and spoken to peers, we are prepared to take our chances. Aside from making it on to Ashurst’s board, the deal veteran in the last three years has established herself as one of the firm’s most prolific practitioners in substantive M&A. She counts Xchanging and Babcock among longstanding clients and frequently acts for the investment banks. Davies led a team advising engineering software giant AVEVA on its £3.5bn reverse takeover in 2017 by Schneider Electric. Notes one recruiter: ‘It was an intensely macho environment. She stuck with it despite the men talking down to her and she’s got her own business.’ Concludes Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ Mike Francies: ‘[Davies] has gone from a very good lawyer to become an outstanding adviser on complex situations.’
‘Pretty phenomenal,’ says one recruiter of Claire Wills’ client and deal list, to say nothing of her position as co-head of global financial institutions at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. She is the relationship partner for Barclays, HSBC, JP Morgan, Prudential and Tesco, having advised the latter on two substantial carve-outs.
While the veteran Wills remains the most cited operator in Freshfields, the firm boasts one of the strongest line-ups of female talent in the City, with well-regarded female partners across the vintage.
With healthcare specialist Jennifer Bethlehem already well established, arguably the name to rise the most in prominence in the last two years is Natasha Good, who has filled the space partially vacated in TMT transactions by Ben Spiers’ departure for Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in 2016. Of the rising stars, Alison Smith (general M&A) and Victoria Sigeti (private equity) are highly recommended.
While no single article could reflect every outstanding female partner in an area as broad as corporate, there are a host of well-regarded individuals to have emerged across 60 interviews conducted for this article. Among them are Clifford Chance (CC)’s consumer goods head, Sarah Jones, who now works primarily out of New York. In London, young partners Melissa Fogarty and Katherine Moir have already built strong reputations, with Moir in January leading for Informa on its £3.9bn bid for UBM. Says one CC veteran of the pair: ‘Complete superstars… truly terrific.’ Of the established lawyers at Allen & Overy, Gillian Holgate is the standout while Annabelle Croker is the one to watch among its young partners. Having only made partner in 2015, Croker was cited by The Legal 500 the following year and is noted for bolstering links with clients like Morgan Stanley. The career of Linklaters corporate partner Sarah Wiggins is distinguished by advising a string of core clients as well as heading Linklaters’ London corporate practice and membership of its executive board.
While Herbert Smith Freehills has work to do, new partner Caroline Rae is already noted after advising the likes of TSB Banking Group, Goldman Sachs and Lonmin on substantive work. With energy and infra one of the firm’s strongest deal disciplines, Sarah Pollock is another key name having run high-end work for EDF, Macquarie, Cavendish and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.
Return to main feature
While it is always difficult to untangle the platform from the individual, Willkie Farr & Gallagher’s Claire McDaid’s (pictured above) record as a business-builder could not be clearer. The former Kirkland & Ellis partner was recruited in 2014 along with Matthew Dean to spearhead a City private equity practice for the New York institution.
The result has been one of the most impressive new-builds in the City in recent years, with a team driven by McDaid handling an active book of 60 sponsor clients. ‘She’s very effective,’ notes Clifford Chance’s Amy Mahon, who worked opposite McDaid on the 2017 acquisition of eircom. The Cameron McKenna-trained lawyer has handled a run of deals at Willkie for Bregal Freshstream, Davidson Kempner, PAI Partners, Wendel, Time Warner and HIG.
‘A real superstar’ is the consensus on Wheatly MacNamara, who has become a go-to adviser for Blackstone Real Estate’s prodigious European operation.
Fellow corporate partner Clare Gaskell commends MacNamara’s ‘amazing practice’. The Stanford Law graduate is also noted for a collaborative approach which has seen her coolly steer through complex deals like Blackstone’s €12.25bn sale of Logicor to CIC last year. MacNamara’s relationship with former Simpson Thacher & Bartlett partner Farhad Karim, who moved to the sponsor as London-based senior managing director and global general counsel of real estate, has, if anything, tightened the long-standing Blackstone/Simpson Thacher partnership.
Despite a lean City arm, Simpson Thacher has plenty of well-regarded lawyers in the sector, with Gaskell and leveraged finance partner Sinead O’Shea also receiving repeated recommendations. With work for Blackstone, KKR, JP Morgan, Silver Lake, Bain Capital, Apax and Permira – O’Shea’s roster of sponsor clients is as good as it gets.
‘She is straightforward and tough – in a good way,’ reflects one partner at a US rival of Helen Croke, who was cited by more than half a dozen peers in our research. Paul Dolman, head of private equity at Croke’s previous home, Travers Smith, likewise notes: ‘I was sorry to have lost Helen – a very good deal lawyer.’
Former Travers colleague Lucie Cawood observes: ‘Helen was a massive inspiration – she was phenomenal. I saw her [when an associate] and thought “Wow – I want to do that!” She’s doing very well.’ While some peers question if Croke has yet to entirely find her feet during a transition phase at Ropes & Gray, which she joined 12 months ago, no-one doubts her as a formidable operator, as demonstrated through work for core clients like Bridgepoint, and Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), which she last year advised on the $3.5bn buyout of software company Visma.
‘A client called me and asked if I knew Sam because he was sitting next to her at breakfast,’ recalls Willkie Farr & Gallagher partner Claire McDaid. ‘“She’s amazing,” said the client. I shouted: “You already have a lawyer!”’
Such are the realities of pitching against Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ Samantha McGonigle, one of the most cited young buyout partners in the Square Mile. The confessed deal junkie was a junior member of the Lovells team that transferred to Weil Gotshal with Marco Compagnoni in 2006. Repeat clients include Advent, Baring Private Equity, Oaktree Capital, Montagu Private Equity and HgCapital. McGonigle regularly works on deals and business development with finance partner Reena Gogna, herself credited with developing Weil Gotshal’s relationship with JP Morgan. Aside from peers at Clifford Chance, Kirkland & Ellis and Ropes & Gray, McGonigle has been cited by The Legal 500, IFLR and Financial News.
‘The most visible woman at Clifford Chance.’
Amy Mahon remains the most widely cited female partner in private equity, which takes some doing in the most competitive product line in City law. One admiring finance colleague calls her ‘the most visible woman at Clifford Chance’.
Among those highlighting Mahon’s contribution include several partners at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett as well as peers at Ropes & Gray and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Notes one recruiter: ‘She’s loyal to CC but could go wherever she wants.’
Mahon cites CC playmaker Matthew Layton as her key mentor. ‘He was collaborative, genuine, persuasive. Matthew taught me to be all over the detail, well-prepped and not waste anyone’s time.’ Aside from handling deals for clients including Apax, KKR Infrastructure, Hermes and EQT, Mahon bolstered her commercial credentials with a two-year stint at Macquarie before re-joining CC at partner level. Class and consistency.
In a sector with new talent always emerging, the robust Caroline Sherrell has made significant inroads at White & Case in infrastructure – one of the hottest parts of the buyout scene – since joining the firm two years ago from Clifford Chance. Kiran Sharma at Ropes & Gray is another partner earning the notice of peers.
Return to main feature
Operating in some of the most fluid areas of finance, restructuring and funds specialist Yen Sum is rapidly becoming one of the City’s most tipped finance counsel. She joined Linklaters in 2002 before a three-year spell on Barclays’ leveraged finance team, returning to Linklaters in 2008. She describes Barclays as a key experience: ‘Being at the coalface on the business side helped shape my understanding of the evolution of buyouts and investment decision-making. It also helped to appreciate how advisers become part of the canvas.’
‘A superstar – irrespective of gender.’
Says one recruiter: ‘She’s a superstar – irrespective of her gender. She’s got it all – powerful, charming and brave. You don’t get a lot of people who are entrepreneurial in Magic Circle firms. She has a work ethic and is technical. The true modern lawyer.’ At Linklaters, in February 2016 she was asked to lead a group building the City firm’s shadow banking client-base. Sidley Austin in November 2016 pushed ahead with recruitment of Sum when she was eight months pregnant, meaning she would be on maternity leave when she first joined, a rare commitment for a transferring partner. Sum herself lauds her Sidley colleague Jennifer Brennan, who was recruited as a partner in 2017 from Linklaters, where she was an associate.
If female transactional counsel too often hide their light under a bushel, the Texas-bred finance star Tamara Box brings a refreshing directness to her career. After early periods working in New York and Singapore, she had successful stints at Lovells and Berwin Leighton Paisner before joining Reed Smith in 2012 to launch a London structured finance practice. The group has since grown to 26 lawyers, nine of them partners. She went on to become Reed Smith Europe and Middle East managing partner in 2016 yet the entrepreneurial Box remains one of the firm’s leading billers. Aside from those duties, she has been a vocal supporter of women lawyers in the industry.
Given its progressive reputation and early moves to support flexible working for partners, Allen & Overy (A&O) comes up surprisingly light on standout female lawyers. The glaring exception is finance star Denise Gibson, one of the most-tipped young banking partners in the City, period. The former Goldman Sachs director covers the complex end of leveraged finance. ‘She’s outstanding. Clients love her – she’s a natural business generator. Forthright style – cuts to the quick of the issues. Very well respected,’ recalls former A&O senior partner David Morley.
Gibson describes her time at Goldman as a watershed: ‘It gave me incredible access at a time when US products were coming to the European market. There aren’t many lawyers who are ambidextrous across US and European debt products and those skills became a useful USP having decided that I wanted to be a partner in private practice.’
She describes her favoured transaction as light on precedent with the loan sold to an unusual audience, summing up: ‘leveraged finance with a twist’. She adds: ‘On those deals you can think creatively and really add value.’
Also much cited is Angela Clist, for years a respected operator in A&O’s securitisation team who has handled some of the firm’s benchmark securities work. Aside from co-heading the firm’s financial institutions group, she is a member of A&O’s board.
If leveraged finance remains a boys’ club, one of the most notable exceptions is Latham & Watkins’ Jay Sadanandan. As one of a four-partner White & Case team that joined Latham in 2010 – in what is now seen as a watershed for Latham’s City arm – Sadanandan has built a reputation as a consistent performer against formidable competition. Aside from a busy practice for clients such as Cinven, CVC and Hellman & Friedman, she has since 2015 squeezed in the London managing partner duties as well.
With Silk Street emerging as the home of top-quality female dealmakers, Linklaters’ restructuring and insolvency co-head Rebecca Jarvis has a superb record over a 25-year legal career. ‘An unsung hero. Formidable,’ says senior partner Charlie Jacobs. ‘Her number has been on my speed dial for the last ten years.’ Jarvis has worked on headline-grabbing deals, including the restructuring and administration of Battersea Power Station, Kodak Group’s Chapter 11 and advising the banks on the €2.2bn European Directors Group workout. Former colleague Yen Sum likewise cites Jarvis as one of the smartest operators around. The understated Jarvis pays tribute to a string of mentors in her career, including current Linklaters banking head Tony Bugg and former Linklaters restructuring veterans Richard Holden, Robert Elliott and Susan Kelly.
Linklaters banking partner Annette Kurdian received a number of credible citations in our research. The Australian-bred leveraged finance specialist has been a particular force in positioning the firm with sponsors and direct lenders like Ares and Alcentra. Also noted is Kurdian’s colleague, restructuring specialist Sarah Mook. Another standout in our research was Elisabeth Baltay, the former Bingham McCutchen partner and structured finance and restructuring specialist who joined King & Spalding in 2014. The Legal 500-ranked Emma Folds is another cited operator in Clifford Chance’s deal finance team, as is colleague, loans specialist Nicola Wherity. On reputation, Ropes & Gray’s co-head of finance Jane Rogers would be a shoo-in, but does not make the full list as much of her reputation was established before she moved to London in 2010. Another proven performer is CMS restructuring veteran Rita Lowe, who heads the firm’s banking and finance team.
Return to main feature
The gracious style of CMS UK senior partner Penelope Warne (pictured above) belies a practitioner with rock solid credentials as an entrepreneurial and assured energy adviser. Joining the firm in 1993 she set up and successfully built its Aberdeen practice and went on to be a decisive force in its successful merger with Scots leader Dundas & Wilson in 2014. As head of energy, she was also a major force in local launches in Brazil, Mexico and Dubai. In 2013 she was elected senior partner of CMS Cameron McKenna, becoming one of the few women to ever lead a top 50 UK law firm. In 2016 she helped drive forward the much-touted, three-way union between CMS Cameron McKenna, Nabarro and Olswang. A prominent figure in the oil and gas industry, others to recognise her work include The Legal 500, The Sunday Times and Euromoney.
One of the less obvious names to emerge hails from Taylor Wessing, where the firm’s youthful head of private equity Emma Danks received five separate citations in our research. Danks trained at Clifford Chance under the mentorship of Adam Signy and David Walker before joining Taylor Wessing as a partner in 2010. Having rapidly established herself she was in May 2017 promoted to head the team. Her practice focuses on deals in the £100m-£500m range for clients including MML Capital, Caledonia Investments, Bridgepoint and Synova. ‘I love Emma,’ observes one rival partner. ‘She has built a nice business there.’ Says another admirer: ‘She’s built one of the best mid-market practices in PE – she got herself into a good space.’
The former Kirkland & Ellis lawyer Anu Balasubramanian is DLA Piper’s strongest female deal name, having joined the firm in 2013. While her profile remains low key in the market, at DLA she has built a reputation as a prolific operator for mid-market work, acting for sponsors including ABRY Partners, Accel-KKR, Oakley Capital and Aurium Capital, typically on deals ranging from £200-£600m.
The mother-of-two concedes that many talented women with families opt to go in-house or focus on other practice areas to gain more autonomy but concludes it is ultimately ‘about understanding that clients are sophisticated and no-one forgets about you because you are off for four months for something important’. Other notable operators at DLA Piper include leveraged finance partner Julie Romer (a regular for Investec and Barclays) and corporate insurance specialist Mel James.
Having established herself in the classy deal team of Macfarlanes, Jessica Adam is reliably cited as the firm’s strongest female operator for M&A. Adam works with clients including Virgin and Exponent. She advises management on higher value deals, such as General Atlantic’s €1bn acquisition of Argus, and has worked with Macfarlanes’ client Slater and Gordon. Adam points to Macfarlanes veteran Bridget Barker – now a consultant – as a role model: ‘a very well respected female partner at a time when there were few’.
Other significant names at Macfarlanes include leveraged finance partner Kirstie Hutchinson, a Slaughter and May alumni who made partner in 2015, and rising star Emmie Jones. Notes one private equity head at a rival firm: ‘Emmie is very commercial, easy to work with and makes all the right points. She does a very good job.’
It is hard to stand out as a private equity lawyer in a team with as strong a sponsor heritage as Travers Smith but Lucie Cawood has managed it, forged in part on the back of a relationship with 3i which stretches back to 2007. ICG is another repeat client since 2009. Cawood admits to being ‘very proud of the fact I was made up to partner while on maternity leave in July 2012’. Notes Travers private equity chief Paul Dolman: ‘[Cawood] has come out of the shadow of Helen Croke. She’s a real star of the future. A very talented individual.’
Baker McKenzie’s London corporate finance head Helen Bradley is ensconced as one of its most influential City partners. The Legal 500-ranked Hogan Lovells partner Maegen Morrison was also noted in our research. Productive corporate real estate specialist Danielle Martin, who last year quit Reed Smith for Greenberg Traurig, is tipped by those in the know as a talent to watch.
Return to main feature
For more information on Who Represents Who, contact:
David Burgess,
Publishing Director, The Legal 500
legal500.com/wrw
[email protected] Continue reading “Who Represents Who: Firms that will be affected by the fall of Carillion”
Given that it has been so well telegraphed that the $10m lateral was coming to the Square Mile, the shock among City peers at the hire of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer private equity veteran David Higgins (pictured) has been, well, shocking. ‘Outrageous’, ‘obscene’ and ‘mildly appalling’ are among the reactions from peers. One hopeful partner at a US firm notes: ‘The clients won’t be impressed with that number splashed all over the news.’
But such sentiments are a naive reading of how the industry is evolving. Yes, if you think of a lateral as wrangling an immediate book of business, such a package suggests needing to preside over $30m within three years to be called a success on a conventional yardstick. That would certainly be a stretch – though not impossible given what some of the strongest City laterals have managed – but that is not the benchmark. Kirkland & Ellis has been stuffed with leveraged finance talent for years while lacking an unquestioned corporate A-lister. The hyper-productive Matthew Elliott delivered that when he joined from Linklaters in 2016, but his practice has a very precise real estate slant. Continue reading “A shock to the system as Freshfields heavyweight departs”
In a blow for traditionalists, our latest cover feature eschews profiling a group of hard-working, smart, highly-confident men who are talented lawyers to instead profile a group of hard-working, smart, variably-confident women who are talented lawyers. Radical stuff.
But then the career cycle for too many ambitious female deal lawyers remains nasty, brutish and short. While women increasingly advance into senior roles in advisory practice areas and even more so among the ranks of senior general counsel, in the upper reaches of transactional law, it is still a boys’ club and anyone claiming differently does not know many corporate lawyers. Continue reading “Women deal stars: plenty to celebrate so ditch the understatement”
‘Turnover for vanity, profit for sanity.’ How many times have you heard that phrase or variations of the theme espoused in the legal industry? A lot since the banking crisis recast the profession.
Commercial firms are forever chasing the grail of higher profitability to the extent of fashioning strategy around the notion of slashing the business to achieve it. People used to forecast consolidation and the dawn of the $10bn law firm – now it is as common for law firm leaders to talk of City-bred institutions getting smaller. Continue reading “Slashing to victory – the most dangerous myth”
National insurance and shipping specialist Hill Dickinson has completed the sale of part of its insurance business group to fellow LB100 firm Keoghs.
The sale involves the transfer of 17 partners and 311 staff, giving Keoghs a new presence in Liverpool, where it will sublet premises from Hill Dickinson, as well as adding staff to its offices in London and Manchester. No sale price was disclosed for the deal, which excludes Hill Dickinson’s marine insurance and clinical negligence work. Continue reading “Hill Dickinson cites focus on growth areas as it ships off insurance business to Keoghs”
A standout performance in Europe helped Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) boost global revenues by 11% in 2016/17, according to the firm’s latest filings with Companies House, although increased overhead saw operating profit barely move.
Global revenues rose from £832.2m to £920.8m, with the firm claiming that its EMEA region ‘generated exceptional revenue growth’. The accounts cited in particular ‘excellent performances in Paris, Moscow and Madrid’ as well as a robust showing from its Asia practices. Mark Rigotti (pictured), chief executive of HSF, commented: ‘It is very encouraging to see another year of growth as our brand continues to strengthen across markets and regions.’ Continue reading “LLP accounts: HSF records ‘exceptional’ revenue growth in Europe as profit holds steady”
