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Ashurst loses second Paris team this year as four partners quit for Gibson Dunn

In a second blow to Ashurst’s Paris office this year, the firm last month lost a four-partner team to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, led by litigation and restructuring partner Jean-Pierre Farges.

Tasked with launching a new French litigation and finance practice at the US firm in Paris, Farges is joined by fellow disputes partners Pierre-Emmanuel Fender and Eric Bouffard, corporate partner Bertrand Delaunay and finance counsel Amanda Bevan, who will be made up to partner in the move.

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Addleshaws, Ashurst, DLA and Eversheds Sutherland chosen for DfT’s first rail panel

Addleshaw Goddard, Ashurst, DLA Piper and Eversheds Sutherland were selected last month to tier one of the Department for Transport (DfT)’s first £50m rail panel.

As part of the panel appointment, which lasts until 2020, the four firms will act on rail franchise competitions, major rolling stock procurements and infrastructure projects.

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High-stakes: White-collar crime teams ready as SFO hits Barclays with landmark prosecution

White collar specialists scramble in landmark prosecution

White-collar crime specialists have scrambled across the City as the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) last month charged Barclays and four former executives with conspiracy to commit fraud, false representation and unlawful financial assistance in arranging a £7.3bn Qatar funding deal at the height of the 2008 financial crisis.

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‘Should be the end of the proposal’: Queen’s Speech reprieve for SFO as abolition move recedes

Theresa May’s Conservative manifesto pledge to subsume the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into the National Crime Agency (NCA) was absent from June’s Queen’s Speech, with lawyers welcoming the prospect of the merger being shelved.

The speech, outlining the next two years’ statutory agenda, instead introduced a UK repeal and a customs bill and related European legislation to replace the EU’s customs regime, the world’s largest by economic output.

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‘Cavalier’: former Clyde & Co litigator struck off roll after string of misleading failures

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has struck off former Clyde & Co senior associate Rajpal Ahluwalia from the roll and ordered him to pay over £41,000 in costs after a series of failures starting in 2013, when he omitted to file a client’s defence.

The June judgment followed a 9-11 May hearing, at which Ahluwalia admitted failing to ensure that a client’s defence in 2013 was filed in good time, resulting in default judgment and £500,000 damages and costs.

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‘Hugely complicated’: Watson Farley, White & Case, A&O line up on $14bn shipping deal

Watson Farley & Williams has advised a group of 27 international and local banks acting as financiers on a $14bn merger between shipping giants Hapag-Lloyd and United Arab Shipping Company (UASC).

The tie-up will create one of the five largest container shipping lines in the world, with 230 vessels and a combined turnover of around $12bn.

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Hogan Lovells opens new Boston office in Collora buyout

Hogan Lovells is acquiring Boston-based litigation and investigations firm Collora on 1 September, taking on 15 partners in a move to bolster the firm’s life sciences offering in the US.

The Collora buyout gives Hogan Lovells access to a new market within the US. It will gain Collora’s expertise in life sciences and healthcare, as well as its financial services and technology clients. After the deal completes, Hogan Lovells and Collora will share over 500 life sciences lawyers.

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Solid foundations but a struggle to build – Can BLP regain the confidence of its 2000s heyday?

Last year did not run smoothly for Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP). Merger talks with Greenberg Traurig publicly fell apart amid some acrimony, while the City firm’s revenues dipped 2% in the 2015/16 year, making it one of the few Legal Business 100 players to see its top line slide.

Even before that, BLP had been through a factional election in 2015 which elevated employment specialist Lisa Mayhew as its new managing partner, while gripes over a disastrous run of partner hires on guaranteed pay deals several years previously have still not been forgotten.

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‘It’s the clothes on top that matter’: how much does structure affect the Swiss Verein firms?

DLA Piper, the world’s second-largest Swiss Verein-structured law firm, saw global turnover in 2016 drop 3% to $2.47bn from $2.54bn. The drop in overall revenue was attributed by the firm to exchange rate fluctuations across the global firm’s international business, which is divided between an international LLP and a US LLP. In sterling, DLA says, turnover was up 3%.

Similarly, Norton Rose Fulbright saw turnover drop 3% to $1.69bn, with the firm again attributing the performance to currency fluctuations. In a statement, a spokesperson said the firm had seen a 3% increase on 2015 revenue using like-for-like exchange rates, adding: ‘Our stated US dollar figures are very susceptible to currency exchange moves and, in the past year, the sterling, euro, Australian/Canadian dollars and South African rand experienced significant negative moves against the US dollar.’

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London calling: the client view

‘I prefer to use the Magic Circle rather than US firms. They are, if anything, becoming better-run businesses.’
Philip Bramwell, BAE Systems

It should come as no surprise that clients on the global stage continue to demand more from their advisers. Yet, for the most part, those London-headquartered firms at the top end of the Global 100 report are delivering for clients despite the influx of international firms, particularly those based in the US, into their home market.

‘I continue to believe that the Magic Circle firms offer excellent strength and depth on big-ticket issues,’ says Philip Bramwell, group general counsel (GC) of multinational defence, security and aerospace company BAE Systems. ‘Their strength is in their gene pool – their core systems and the processes that they continue to invest in – and they are, if anything, becoming better-run businesses.’

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