Anna Lawrence
Legal director, offer and supply chain
KINGFISHER
Anna Lawrence is legal director of Kingfisher’s offer and supply chain business unit. Formed in 2015, the business brings together the buying teams for a large portfolio of home improvement brands, including B&Q and Screwfix in the UK and Brico Dépôt and Castorama in France, with Lawrence now overseeing everything from managing relationships with suppliers to monitoring IP on thousands of product lines globally.
Industry/sector: Venture capital
Founded: 2009
Founders: Jeff Lynn, Carlos Silva
Chief legal officer: Karen Kerrigan
Based: London
Seedrs began as an MBA project at Oxford’s Saïd Business School before launching in 2012. In May that year it raised £1.3m in funding and received authorisation to become the first regulated equity crowdfunding platform in the world. Like Crowdcube, its model is based on bringing crowd investors and entrepreneurs together to invest in start-ups. It has now funded over 350 companies and helped to invest over £130m through campaigns on its platform.
Continue reading “The Companies of Tomorrow: Fintech and Alternative Finance”
Alexandra McGurk
Vice president and counsel, litigation
WILLIAM MORRIS ENDEAVOR ENTERTAINMENT/IMG
Recently promoted to vice president and counsel, litigation, Alexandra McGurk is described by one TMT partner as ‘a very clever lawyer who manages a diverse range of problems in a commercial manner with a high degree of focus on positive outcomes’.
Continue reading “Rising Stars: Technology, Media and Telecoms”
SECRET ESCAPES
Industry/sector: Travel
Founded: 2010
Founders: Tom Valentine, Alex Saint
Head of legal: Christine Cordon
Heralded as one of the UK’s runaway tech success stories, members-only British travel company Secret Escapes has made its mark in the travel industry selling heavily discounted luxury hotel stays and trips through its website and mobile app.
Industry/sector: Travel
Founded: 2001
Founders: Gareth Williams, Barry Smith, Bonamy Grimes
General counsel: Carolyn Jameson
Founded in Edinburgh in 2001, Skyscanner has revenues of £120m and has offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London in the UK with additional offices in locations including Singapore, Beijing, Miami, Barcelona, and Tokyo. The site is available in over 30 languages and on average is used by 60 million people per month.
Continue reading “The Companies of Tomorrow: Technology and Digital Business”
DEEPMIND HEALTH
Industry/sector: Medical research/data
Founded: 2010 (DeepMind), 2016 (DeepMind Health)
Founders (DeepMind): Demis Hassabis (pictured), Shane Legg, Mustafa Suleyman
General counsel: Trevor Callaghan (DeepMind)
Based: London
In early 2016, Google-owned artificial intelligence (AI) specialist DeepMind announced it would create a healthcare division. DeepMind has chalked up some notable successes in advanced AI – including creating AlphaGo, the first programme to beat a human player at the game of Go – making the formation of DeepMind Health one of the most touted recent developments in the life sciences sector.
Continue reading “The Companies of Tomorrow: Pharma and Life Sciences”
When Edward Traynor took the general counsel (GC) position at Paddy Power in April 2015, he arrived in the middle of a £400m return of capital to the business’s shareholders. Once that was completed, he planned to settle in, restructure the legal team and take a holiday after the company’s annual general meeting (AGM). That holiday never happened. Instead Paddy Power agreed a £7bn merger with Betfair to create one of the world’s largest online gambling businesses with more than 7,000 staff and £1.2bn in sales. Even the best-laid plans often go awry.
As partners in a 2010 transatlantic marriage, the first few years of Hogan Lovells’ nuptials were not without issues. The proposition that a merger-of-equals between a major UK and a US law firm would fire growth and renew ambition was found wanting as the pair became caught up in complex integration. It also soon became apparent that – despite being initially billed as two institutions with much in common – a substantial cultural gap between Lovells and the more thrusting Washington DC-bred Hogan & Hartson was complicating its post-merger relaunch.
While the outcomes are far from clear, Legal Business asks how advisers and clients can best tackle Brexit
Former US Secretary of State for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, took a lot of flak when he famously uttered these words in 2002, used with regard to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Today, they would not sound out of place coming from a lawyer speculating on the impact of Brexit.
Continue reading “The blueprint – clients and advisers scramble as the UK kicks off Brexit”
‘It’s a shrinking universe in terms of those playing in the top tier,’ says one partner. ‘Two years ago there were about 15 firms which were completely capable and honest when they said: “We’re a leveraged finance house.” I don’t think that’s the case anymore. It’s a very, very small community and there are so many more clients concentrated with fewer firms.’
Promoted to group GC at the start of the year, the experienced M&A lawyer on why he wants to stay hands-on
When Ruwan De Soyza arrived for his interview with former Worldpay general counsel (GC) Mark Chambers in 2011, he thought he was being considered for the role of GC for corporate services. Unbeknown to De Soyza, Chambers had a different path in mind, which ultimately led to him taking the group GC role in January this year.
‘We will continue to hire lawyers we see as adding something. That continues to be the mantra: hire great lawyers and your practice will grow.’
Richard East, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
As our Global London report hits desks, the leadership at US law firms in the City weigh up the challenges ahead
‘The firm has a clearly defined strategy for where and how we will grow. We will continue to build our top-ranked transactional, regulatory, litigation and trial practices and focus on the industries that are driving the global economy. Mission drift can happen if you take your eye off the strategy. The investments we make are for the long term and are key to ensuring we stay focused on what we need to do to serve our clients’ needs today, and in the future.’
Richard Trobman, vice chair, Latham & Watkins
Ah, despite the changing fashions, technology and economic realities of the day, in law you can always rely on that curious mix of mutual hypocrisy, miscommunication, mistrust and conflicting agendas between clients and law firms to endure.
The latest flashpoint is Deutsche Bank’s current panel review, which has pressed tendering law firms to write off time for trainees and newly-qualified lawyers handling its matters. Though it appears that not all have consented, for many this is the thin end of the wedge and a worrying sign that this US trend is making its way over here.
Continue reading “Clients and rookie lawyers – some awkward truths”
For months I’ve refrained from adding to the reams of pointless Brexit commentary given that until developments develop, not much can reasonably be said. But now article 50 has been triggered, there is a little more to work with.
Actually, I could have taken a break from banging on about King & Wood Mallesons a little earlier since by January it was clear that the UK government was tilting towards a hard Brexit and the UK losing access to the single market.
Continue reading “Prepare for a bumpy Brexit ride and to be ignored”
The vultures have been circling. Partner hires hit new heights among the 50 firms that comprise our Global London table this year, but overall the City’s US shops have remained steady after a period that saw the UK economy rocked by last year’s Brexit vote and the legal market witness its largest European firm collapse.
Continue reading “Swoop to conquer – a turbulent year for US firms in London but no retreat”
My dad was a cab driver and my mum a factory worker. She was also a photographer’s assistant and met my dad at a wedding. After that she vowed to never drink again because she met my dad.
I went to a local state school in Wembley. I got into Oxford. There weren’t many people who went to university from that school. It was a very varied background; English wasn’t the first language for probably half of the kids at home. But it was a good school and I had teachers that cared.
Continue reading “Life during law: Ray Berg, Osborne Clarke”
As it stands, foreign advisers continued to aggressively invest in London through 2016. The number of London-based lawyers employed at the 50 largest foreign firms, now numbers 6,033, an increase of 22% over the last two years despite a generally subdued UK legal services market. The elimination of King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) from our tables this year understates the growth through the last 12 months but in underlying terms, headcount probably grew at least 4% even allowing for the re-allocation of legacy SJ Berwin lawyers to US rivals. Given the KWM implosion, it was unsurprisingly a record year for partner recruitment, with nearly 200 laterals within the group. The overall pace of growth, however, slowed somewhat on 2015.
Continue reading “Global London: Has the City reached the end of its curious post-Lehman boom?”
Linklaters has undertaken a review of equity points in its finance practice, as banking groups continue to move toward sponsors and away from traditional lenders.
Continue reading “‘Needed a degree of reinvigoration’ – Linklaters reviews banking equity points”
Around 25 associates across Freshfields are part of the initiative, which began when a client invited associate Adam Ryan to pitch alongside another associate, Claire Harrop. The pair now lead the fintech associate initiative.
Continue reading “Freshfields gives power to associates to pitch for fintech clients”
