In February it emerged A&O used its bonus pool to hire a three-partner Paul Hastings team. The US firm’s leveraged finance head Bill Schwitter joined A&O’s New York office as the firm’s global co-head of high-yield alongside partner Michael Chernick and capital markets partner Jeffrey Pellegrino.
Leavers’ provisions in war for talent come under scrutiny
While the first round of a case that saw Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) pursue an action against eight partners who quit to join White & Case in Australia has concluded, the dispute has highlighted the ongoing war over talent between UK firms and their US rivals.
KWM China buys reassurance by taking SJ Berwin name
An initial report into the financial affairs of King & Wood Mallesons’ (KWM) now defunct European arm estimates that unsecured creditors are set to lose £33.5m as the firm’s inner financial workings begin to surface.
Continue reading “Unsecured creditors to lose almost £34m as KWM Europe admin continues”
With the asset management market tipped for further consolidation, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer scored a role alongside Slaughter and May and Maclay Murray & Spens on Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management’s £11bn merger in March.
Continue reading “Freshfields wins mandate on Standard Life/Aberdeen Asset Management £11bn merger”
The deal was announced in March and is expected to close in the second half of 2017. Under the terms, Scottish company Wood Group is offering £5.64 per Amec share, for 56% ownership of the combined group.
Continue reading “Magic Circle duo land £2.2bn energy deal as antitrust concerns surface”
Firms retreat as funds raised through IPOs in the region fall 26%
Davis Polk & Wardwell and Kirkland & Ellis are the latest US firms to lose corporate partners from their Hong Kong offices as public listings in the region decline.
The deal gives the firm a new Amsterdam office that expands its European presence to 26 offices in 18 countries. Boekel adds 70 lawyers to the global firm and 16 partners, with a focus on real estate, corporate and litigation.
The deal gives the firm a new Amsterdam office that expands its European presence to 26 offices in 18 countries. Boekel adds 70 lawyers to the global firm and 16 partners, with a focus on real estate, corporate and litigation.
Approximately 300 support staff roles are to be cut at CMS Cameron McKenna, Olswang and Nabarro ahead of their triple merger next month. The firms ran a redundancy consultation from January to March, with 650 of the 950 support staff offered roles in the combined firm.
Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF), Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and Mayer Brown led as the owners of London’s tallest tower, known as the Cheesegrater, agreed to its sale for £1.1bn. HSF and Mayer Brown advised joint owners British Land and Oxford Properties Group, while BLP assisted buyer CC Land Holdings.
Continue reading “Deal watch: Corporate activity in April 2017”
The event was preceded by a reception to mark the launch of our fifth annual GC Powerlist which, under the unifying title The Clients of Tomorrow, looked at both the outstanding rising star in-house counsel and high-growth companies with the prospects of becoming the global giants of tomorrow. At the gathering, which included key representatives from FTSE 100 companies such as Virgin Atlantic, Telefónica and RSA, Legal Business editor-in-chief Alex Novarese said this year’s report was the most challenging yet to research but also probably the most interesting.
Continue reading “Standing tall – The Legal Business Awards 2017”
London office headcount: 165 lawyers, 42 partners
Fee-earner headcount change since 2011: +72%
London office management committee: Camille Abousleiman (chair), Jason Butwick, Gus Black and Miriam Gonzalez
Office speciality: Private equity, finance, litigation/investigations
Representative London work: Advising UK oil and gas independent Chrysaor Holdings’ $3bn acquisition of a package of assets in the UK North Sea from Shell.
‘We only arrived towards the end of last year and have had a strong start, signing deals during our first two months which originated at our prior firms.’
Ross Allardice, Dechert
Despite securing the first major US takeover of a London firm back in 2000, Dechert has since been largely viewed as strategically cautious and lacking visibility in the City. However, the Philadelphia-bred firm has been making notable efforts to make up ground in the last year or so.
As US firms continue their push in London, Dechert has found added momentum, reporting a solid growth in City income last year (notable compared to the 10% slide in its revenues in 2015), aided by a 30% jump in headcount and a number of high-profile hires.
Significant laterals in 2016 include high-profile City duo Ross Allardice from White & Case and John Markland from Kirkland & Ellis, who arrived last November in the firm’s private equity (PE) and finance practices.
Earlier in the year, Dechert turned to DLA Piper for finance partners Philip Butler and David Miles to enhance its direct lending business (Butler was DLA’s global head of leveraged finance). And most recently in the City, Dechert hired Clifford Chance’s litigation partner Stephen Surgeoner.
The firm also recorded a significant uplift in instructions last year. These include advising Magyar Telekom on the sale of its holding in the Invitel Group to the China-CEE Investment Fund and representing Ziarco’s shareholders on its sale to Novartis, led by corporate partner Graham Defries.
Other noteworthy Dechert London partners include head of structured and real estate finance Charles Malpass, and co-chair of the firm’s international trade and government regulation Miriam Gonzalez, whom the firm also hired from DLA in 2011. However, finance partners at rival firms argue that despite its US strength and its recent City push, Dechert will continue to struggle due to its lack of bank panel relationships.
‘Dechert is trying to operate how DLA did, but it has the weakness of not being on panels like other City firms are. This is not a problem for firms like Latham, because its work is not fee-sensitive,’ says a senior City finance partner.
However, Dechert’s head of corporate in London, Douglas Getter, argues changes to the credit markets have altered the dynamic.
‘Phil [Butler] and Dave [Miles] are a good example of the synergies between traditional and alternative lenders. They started at DLA and did bank work for over 20 years. By the time we met them, their work had evolved to almost 75% for direct lenders,’ he says.
And, while Dechert’s City history suggests it has not been fulfilling its potential, sustained expansion in the firm’s core areas – PE, finance and investigations, as well as life sciences, financial services M&A and international arbitration – seems to be working.
The same month it hired Allardice and Markland, Dechert picked up a first-time instruction for key White & Case client Mid Europa Partners on the largest PE deal in Romania.
Allardice comments: ‘We only arrived towards the end of last year and have had a strong start during this period, signing deals during our first two months which originated at our prior firms. This momentum has continued into 2017.’
Getter adds: ‘What the firm does very well is allowing the people in Europe to do European and UK deals without people coming over from the US. It’s to do with trust. The biggest deals we’ve done here are self-originated. We are 160 lawyers and certainly not a satellite office for the US.’
Regarding the firm’s strategic direction, New York, London and Hong Kong remain the key geographies in general, with Germany and Paris regarded as underweight and where the firm is paying particular attention to growth in the short term.
‘Now we’re looking to continue building our platform. Our USP is to represent funds in everything they do, both under US and UK law, and that’s the position we have put ourselves in,’ Getter concludes.
Georgiana Tudor
London office headcount: 134 lawyers, 45 partners
Fee-earner headcount change since 2011: +17%
London head: Matthew Dening
Office speciality: Funds, private equity, finance, restructuring, capital markets
Representative work: Advised TowerBrook Capital Partners on its sale of Netherlands-based frozen food company Van Geloven to McCain Foods; acting for Wells Fargo on its £300m purchase of a new European headquarters in London.
‘Private equity has been an ambition of the firm for some time. While the team is based in London, it is a global initiative.’
Matthew Dening, Sidley Austin
One the biggest movers in the Global London report this year in terms of headcount, Sidley Austin started 2016 with a bang. A hiring spree saw the firm recruit 12 partners into its London team, compared to one in 2015, eliciting comments from City rivals that the firm had ‘pulled out the chequebook’ and ‘put its money where its mouth is’.
The firm has made good on ambitions to push hard to create a broad private equity (PE) and sponsor-led finance offering, and the list of targets on the firm’s roster – Kirkland & Ellis; Linklaters; Cravath, Swaine & Moore; Paul Hastings; Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and DLA Piper – are testament to a year of investment.
Lawyer headcount in the office has grown from 108 in 2015 to 134 last year, an increase of 24%, while partner numbers at the turn of the new year had risen from 35 to 45. The recruitment drive returns the firm to the level of coverage it enjoyed around 2008, after which the firm retrenched from the City in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
City turnover reached record levels, up to £75.2m for 2016 from £64.2m in 2015. Globally, the firm remains steadily on the up, if at a slower pace than in recent years, with Sidley posting a small revenue boost to $1.93bn, up 3% following on from a year of 6% growth in 2015. Profit per equity partner has also seen a 3% bump, from $2.06m to $2.13m.
The year was punctuated by aggressive team hires from Kirkland. In February it was reported Sidley had landed a six-partner team from the Chicago firm, including the rare departure of two equity partners. The joiners included corporate partners Erik Dahl, Christian Iwasko, Sava Savov and Fatema Orjela; leveraged finance partner Bryan Robson; and tax partner Oliver Currall.
The team was later reunited with Willkie partner and former Kirkland debt financing partner James Crooks, and was further boosted by the addition of bankruptcy partner Jifree Cader, also from Kirkland, employment partner Susan Fanning from DLA, and a high-yield debt team comprising Alan Grinceri from Cravath and Noel Hughes from Paul Hastings.
And, over Christmas, the firm completed its 2016 spree with the hire of banking rising star Yen Sum from Linklaters, who is expected to develop its alternative lender clients.
Sidley’s London offering now offers a package of PE and other funds-focused lawyers. Says office managing partner Matthew Dening: ‘Private equity has been an ambition of the firm for some time. While the team is based in London, it is a global initiative.’
That London growth syncs with the firm’s European ambition. With the arrival of Dahl, the firm returned to the German market two years after making an exit from Frankfurt. Since his arrival, the firm has further added nine laterals in Munich, seven from Kirkland and one each from DLA and Linklaters, although many are still serving gardening leave at their previous firms.
Work has now turned to bedding in the London team and securing the kind of deals the partners were hired to complete.
Key work for the new team has been winning clients such as TowerBrook Capital Partners. Early mandates have included advising TowerBrook on its acquisition of Dutch education company Van Dijk Educatie for an undisclosed fee, led by buyout partners Iwasko, Savov and Orjela with finance from Robson. The firm has also won restructuring work, advising French vehicle leasing firm Fraikin, which holds €1.4bn of debt.
The firm’s new cohort of partners are unsurprisingly optimistic about the team they have built at their new firm. Says debt finance partner Crooks: ‘We know that from a market perspective, for firms to invest, the decision becomes tougher: do you dip your toe in the water and go out with a small offering, not supplemented with the full firepower of a high-yield bond team twinned with restructuring, levfin and core M&A? Unlike some, we are able to fully hit the range of deals and structures our target clients want to be able to use.’
The combined offering of the Kirkland hires, along with Sidley’s existing London unit, is not insubstantial. But with the addition of such a portable and high-value team, as demonstrated by the raid on Kirkland, Sidley’s management will now have to work to bed down the new arrivals and take full advantage of the momentum handed to them.
Matthew Field
London office headcount: 69 lawyers, 19 partners
Fee-earner headcount change since 2011: n/a
London head: Tim Frazer
Office speciality: Life sciences, dispute resolution, telecommunications, white-collar crime Continue reading “Focus: Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer”
Fast-growth, tech-driven companies are reshaping the economy. But what’s it like to be their general counsel?
As the old joke goes, if you want to make a million from a start-up, start with three million. It is a market-dominated by founders’ visions rather than revenue-generating products. That typically means a lot of money is burned through before investors can expect returns. But, as recent high-value initial public offerings have shown, the rewards on offer can be enormous. Start-ups are also becoming hugely important to the wider economy. In the UK alone, they are worth nearly £200bn a year, according to a recent report by Virgin StartUp.
Continue reading “The fast fast track – meet the clients of tomorrow”
While other Legal Business 100 firms such as Slaughter and May and Simmons & Simmons are giving free legal advice to win over fintech clients, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer associates have been given the opportunity to pitch and win client relationships as part of a growing bid to win new clients in this area. Continue reading “Freshfields gives power to associates to pitch for fintech clients”
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”
Navigant’s Stephanie Tombling on the considerable challenges firms face when dealing with business interruption
Business interruption usually accounts for the lion’s share of losses in insurance claims stemming from damage to property resulting from fire, explosion, weather events, equipment failure, faulty design, or simply human error. The loss of buildings, equipment and inventory impacts a business’s ability to service its customers, negatively affecting sales. According to Allianz Risk Barometer 2016, business interruption ranks number one, for the fourth year in a row, among the top risks facing businesses worldwide. Continue reading “Sponsored briefing: Business interrupted”
