Latham & Watkins has secured a senior hire from a Magic Circle competitor in New York, recruiting Allen & Overy (A&O) corporate veteran Peter Harwich.
Harwich specialises in advising public companies on complex public and private M&A transactions. He was established as one of A&O’s leading US deal advisers having handled $1bn-plus deals for Thomson Reuters, SAP, Deutsche Börse, Misys and GE. Continue reading “Latham hires New York playmaker to bolster M&A team in significant loss for A&O”
In the wake of the banking crisis, some commentators claimed the legal industry was set for a bloodbath that would sweep away 10,000 solicitors’ jobs from a flabby trade. As so often, the profession defied the critics, handling its post-Lehman reboot with assurance. Now, after posting on the face of it impressive numbers for 2016/17 in the shadow of Brexit and two major electoral upsets, there is talk of the resilience of the industry. The Legal Business 100 (LB100) has, after all, grown from £12.25bn to £22.06bn over the last decade and this year the group at long last surpassed its record PEP of £703,000 set way back in 2008.
And yet scratch the surface and there is much cause for unease. A good chunk of the long-term growth of the UK’s largest firms is due to consolidation, while the 2016/17 results have been hugely flattered by currency movements. Taken as one year, the numbers are respectable, but the long-term view is ominous, particularly for the City’s traditional leaders. Continue reading “Bangs and whimpers – LB100 performance is a lot weaker than it looks”
A future of individual lawyers being as easy to flag down for the public as a cab has taken a step forward with the UK’s main law watchdog this week issuing plans to make it easier for solicitors to practise on their own.
Proposals this week from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) would make it easier for solicitors to provide reserved legal services including litigation without being employed by a law firm or registered as sole practitioners.
Associate pay used to be simple. Lockstepped and transparent to the nth degree on both sides of the Atlantic, you knew exactly where you stood and exactly when the legal market was overheating.
There were obvious downsides to such transparency. Back in the late 1990s/2000s boom, a salary war triggered by Palo Alto law firms within weeks translated into huge hikes in New York. Soon enough London followed when SJ Berwin announced 25% pay hikes that spread through the market like wildfire. This was the first age of the online message boards, which further stoked the inflationary pay cycle. Continue reading “Comment: The associate pay smoke screen is fooling no-one”
Bristows has become the latest Legal Business 100 firm to elect a female leader, today (20 September) appointing life sciences co-head Liz Cohen as its new joint managing partner.
The appointment of Cohen (pictured), who joined the firm as a trainee in 1999 and made partner in 2008, follows the passing of the hugely popular Theo Savvides in a cycling accident in July and sees her link-up with joint managing partner and corporate specialist Marek Petecki. Despite her promotion, she will continue to advise her clients on patent litigation in the English courts, for which she has a leading reputation. Continue reading “‘Big shoes to fill’: Bristows appoints Cohen as new joint managing partner”
After the Magic Circle, this week it was time for the US players to kick off the autumn deal season, as Global 100 firms acted on two headline-grabbing deals in Europe and Asia.
Latham & Watkins and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton advised on the €15bn (£13.1bn) Franco-German merger between Siemens’ and Alstom’s railway operations, while Ropes & Gray and Morrison & Foerster led on the $18bn (£13.4bn) sale of Toshiba’s chip business, reportedly the largest-ever private equity deal in Asia. From the Magic Circle, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer had roles in both deals. Continue reading “Deal watch: US giants line up on European rail mega-merger and largest-ever Asia PE deal”
In a move that should draw a line under a controversial competition dispute, the Law Society has settled with online training provider Socrates after it was found to have abused its dominant market position by the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) over training tied to its conveyancing accreditation scheme.
Socrates had issued the claim last year, alleging that the Law Society’s requirement for law firms to buy anti-money laundering (AML) and mortgage fraud training from it as a condition to maintain their Conveyancing Quality Scheme Accreditation (CQS) was anticompetitive. Continue reading “Law Society settles ‘mortifying’ market abuse case with training provider”
Global 100 firms have taken the lead on a trio of multibillion-dollar deals announced this week as the autumn deal season kicks off in earnest.
London’s big four international firms have featured large opposite Wall street rivals, with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer acting on Hellman & Friedman’s $5.3bn acquisition of Nets and Clifford Chance (CC) on Unilever’s $2.7bn buyout of Carver Korea. Continue reading “Deal watch: Magic Circle firms in busy start to autumn as Freshfields and CC take leading roles in global buyouts”
Dentons is to embark on another chapter of its global expansion by entering Uganda through a merger with the African country’s largest law firm, Kampala Associated Advocates (KAA).
As 2017 marks a return to acquisition mode after a quieter 2016, the firm will add yet another new member to its global network, bringing 26-lawyer KAA under the Dentons brand. Continue reading “Africa latest chapter in Dentons global playbook as it targets Uganda through local tie-up”
From the perspective of a GC at a major multinational, which will be the key external adviser over the next ten years, the legal firm that is top decile at attracting, motivating and retaining the best talent throughout its business? Or the institution that excels at building market-leading systems, processes and technology? Put another way: which approach will provide competitive advantage and dominance over the other camp?
Continue reading “Systems v talent – clients will have to choose”
The legal team at Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) now reports to the bank’s finance team after the group’s latest reorganisation, which also saw the departure of chief people, legal and strategy officer and ex-Linklaters managing partner Simon Davies, after less than two years.
The move has shifted responsibility for the legal and strategy teams to LBG’s chief financial officer George Culmer, with group general counsel Kate Cheetham reporting directly to him.
The changes, which were implemented from 4 September 2017, will also see Cheetham attend the group’s executive committee. António Horta Osório, LBG’s group chief executive, said the changes were fundamental to prepare the group for its upcoming strategic plan for the 2018-20 period.
Do you know your cash-burn phase from your TLDNR? Welcome to the buccaneering, hierarchy-lite world of the fast-growth, tech-driven ‘disruptors’, the kind of business that a growing number of lawyers aspire to work in or advise.
Speaking at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum recently, renowned industry futurologist Richard Susskind accused the UK’s law schools of being stuck in the 1970s, preparing graduates to undertake work that will become increasingly uncommon while failing to train aspiring solicitors in the new technologies that will replace much of the work lawyers now do.
In October 2017, solicitors will make their first declaration that they have ‘reflected on and addressed any identified learning and development needs’. Continuing professional development (CPD) is the latest aspect of solicitors’ lives to convert to an outcomes-focused approach, under the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)’s continuing competence regime. Continue reading “Over to you: assessing your training need in the age of ‘continuing competence’”
Imagine the worst: within the last 72 hours, your company has been hit by a major crisis. There may have been serious damage to the community in which you operate. Your customers may have suffered, people’s livelihoods may have been destroyed, the environment may be irretrievably damaged. Some of your employees and contractors may be injured, or worse. Your investors will be livid, and the board looking to assign blame. By the end of the first week, chances are your organisation will be facing dozens of lawsuits, some set to become class actions over time.
Even for City lawyers used to increasingly heavy-handed tactics in panel reviews from banking groups, it proved something of a shock. News earlier this year that Deutsche Bank had notified pitching firms of its unwillingness to pay for trainees and newly-qualified lawyers during its last adviser review sent a jolt through the UK legal market. The practice of writing off the time of junior lawyers has been common for years in the US, reflecting in part higher relative salaries, charge-out rates and a propensity to clock up more tangential work as billable hours stateside.
On 19 May, Iran went to the polls for what many believed would be a tightly-fought election. By the next morning it was clear that the analysts’ predictions had been wide of the mark. Incumbent president Hassan Rouhani, leader of the Moderation and Development Party, secured a landslide victory over his nearest rival, Ebrahim Raisi, chair of the Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces. Shortly after the results were announced, Rouhani appeared on state television to say the election had shown Iran was committed to improving relations with the rest of the world. To investors and businesses that have been eyeing the country for years, it was a positive sign, but hopes of an open market have been dashed before. Sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme were lifted in early 2016, but businesses have so far been frustrated in the ongoing difficulties they face in the market.
‘It has happened to me where you serve a client, have a great book of business, and then Ernst & Young [EY] is lucky enough to win the audit work for that client,’ says EY global legal head Cornelius Grossmann, reflecting on the vagaries and rewards of providing legal services in a Big Four giant.
Is the general counsel the ringmaster managing risk effectively within their organisation, or a stage prompt waiting in the wings? These were the main discussion points of a recent panel debate before an audience of more than 40 senior in-house lawyers gathered together at Eight Members Club in Moorgate.
On 21 July 2017, the House of Lords EU Internal Market Sub-Committee (the EU Committee), chaired by Lord Whitty, launched an inquiry into the key issues that will arise in the negotiations on Brexit and the impact of Brexit on UK competition policy. Continue reading “Public call for evidence”
