Firm completes Beijing merger, plans Shanghai return in 2017
Fieldfisher re-established its China practice in November by merging with 12-partner Beijing firm JS Partners in a combination that operates under a Swiss Verein structure.
Continue reading “‘We learnt a few lessons’: Fieldfisher tries again in China”
Dentons has scaled up its Central American ambitions with plans to combine with regional firm Muñoz Global.
The combination, if approved by both partnerships, will give Dentons a presence in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama in early 2017. The global firm will merge with 53-lawyer Muñoz Global, a firm newly-created by Arias & Muñoz founders José Antonio Muñoz and Pedro Muñoz, who have split away from their former firm which will contrive to operate as Arias in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Continue reading “Dentons cracks Central America as key local player Muñoz Global joins network”
Madeleine Farman reports on recent remuneration changes among the City elite
With the growing threat of losing star partners to aggressively-expanding US firms, the Magic Circle’s traditional remuneration models have come increasingly under pressure. Last month Linklaters voted through changes to its remuneration model, while at press time Clifford Chance (CC) was due to complete a review of where partners should sit on its lockstep in a bid to retain key contributors and manage under-performers, 18 months after voting through the last set of changes.
Madeleine Farman and Victoria Young assess the firm’s reboot after a tough post-2008 run
Traditionally a strong lender side practice in London built around relationships with clients like Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, White & Case’s banking team has moved on since the loss of a four-partner team to Latham & Watkins back in 2010. The exit of then co-head of banking Chris Kandel and his team was a significant hit to a practice that had been established at the peak of the 2000s credit binge as one of the City’s top leveraged shops. Continue reading “Finance view – White & Case reinvents its London banking practice with some success”
Georgiana Tudor assesses the New York-headquartered firm’s sluggish development
Like all major global law firms, Shearman & Sterling has had its reverses in recent years, albeit a few more than most. The fundamental question that has dogged the firm in Wall Street, London and Germany, is whether this proud US outfit is prepared to move quickly and decisively enough to convincingly get past those setbacks.
Though it will be outdated by the time this issue hits desks, I am professionally obligated I suppose to return to the subject of King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) as the firm’s troubled European business reaches what must be the decisive chapter of its post-merger tale.
With the recapitalisation deal having failed to secure the required backing from the legacy SJ Berwin partnership that would have seen its Australian and Chinese counterparts offer much-needed support, the only obvious next step in Europe if the firm is to stay in anything like a coherent whole appears to be a transfer to another firm. With debts over £30m and partners peeling away, the chances of that outcome do not look great. That is even before you address the complications of shifting part of a business contained within a multi-profit centre verein.
Continue reading “Buck-passing and buyers’ remorse as KWM saga nears end”
Well, it is nearly over and few in the profession will mourn the passing of 2016. Not since the banking crisis of 2008/09 have 12 months so drastically recast the environment in which law firms ply their trade, most strikingly, of course, in June’s vote for Britain to quit the EU and November’s election of Donald Trump as the 45th US president.
It would be an understatement to say the majority of City lawyers were hoping both votes would go the other way. Now the profession is facing a 2017 as unpredictable and unnerving as 2009 seemed in the aftermath of Lehman’s collapse. That year heralded an unprecedented wave of job cuts and recast the industry. But despite comparable uncertainty, 2017 does not yet look as threatening. Firms remain in their leaner New Normal form and after a tumbleweed prelude to the Brexit vote and a quiet summer, a wave of deal-making has powered many firms as business gets on with investments put on hold.
Continue reading “After shocks of 2016, law leaders may need to start thinking”
It is often rightly noted that law is a conservative old game, as can be gleaned from the identikit strategies of City law firms. Invest in transactional work and international offices, manage your partnership proactively, half-heartedly corporatise the business and hire a load of non-lawyer professionals with dubious mandates. Makes sense right? Except when everyone else does it. Turns out there is a little thing called supply and demand and if you are chasing clients in the same place as everyone else, it is harder to make a buck.
And as the entertaining, buccaneering, bling-styled ascent of Mishcon de Reya illustrates, going your own way can be obscenely good business and fun to boot. Mishcon wanted to change in the 1990s but still decided to stick to what it was good at. Luckily what Mishcon was good at proved to be a licence to print money as disputes, private client and real estate boomed even as larger City law firms looked elsewhere. As ever the most important thing in business and life is being lucky but you don’t move Harvard Business School case studies saying that.
Continue reading “What does Mishcon know that your managing partner doesn’t?”
‘There is a pause in the activities firms like ours service. The question is, for what? Business may get used to a continuum of uncertainty.’
Steve Cooke, Slaughter and May
After a year of mergers, Brexit, and Trump, law firm leaders reflect on the 12 months gone by and size up the year ahead
A COMPLETE WORLD
‘The world has become more complex, and clients are looking for advisers who can cut through the red tape and help them navigate the choppy waters. That’s our sweet spot – the harder a deal becomes the more we feel at home.’
Charlie Jacobs, senior partner, Linklaters (more…)
The conglomerate’s EMEA GC on forging a groundbreaking sole-adviser mandate and its recent $16.5bn merger
In an area of the profession obsessed with talking up innovation and downplaying costs, David Symonds, EMEA general counsel (GC) for recently merged entity Johnson Controls International (JCI), is a name synonymous with both.
Continue reading “Client profile: David Symonds, Johnson Controls International”
The trend for reduced panels has seen law firms put through their paces by clients eager to drive innovation and control spend. Legal Business reviews the reviews
In-house teams may have grown in size and stature over recent years, but their external adviser panels are definitely shrinking. As a result, law firms find themselves increasingly at the sharp end during adviser reviews (see box ‘Cutting back’, below), with clients pushing for better rates, greater efficiencies and added extras.
Continue reading “A buyers’ market – The trends and traumas in adviser reviews”
Clyde & Co has been on a terrific run of growth in the last five years. With a new senior partner installed and his predecessor in the US, will the firm be able to maintain momentum?
When Legal Business sat down with Clyde & Co’s new senior partner Simon Konsta in November, the firm’s notoriously hands-on chief executive Peter Hasson was on holiday in Miami. While discussing Hasson’s intense focus on the day job, Konsta is asked if Hasson will be able to resist checking in. Minutes into the interview, Konsta’s phone starts ringing. It’s Hasson.
Continue reading “Sideways – A lateral move in leadership and big US ambitions for Clyde & Co”
Public inquiries have the power to seek truth in tragedy and scandal, but could a rigid process and weak leadership be undermining their authority? We talk to the professionals at the sharp end
It was supposed to find the facts amid decades of cover-ups and abuse of the most vulnerable in society, but in recent months the former chair of one of the most complicated inquiries in British history was branded a disgrace and its lead counsel departed trailing controversy and legal threats.
Continue reading “Watching the watchmen – at the sharp end with the lawyers on public inquiries”
‘The emphasis around our culture is no billy bollocks…’
Elliot Moss, director of business development
‘Mishcon is like being at uni but you get paid for it.’
Kevin Gold, managing partner
‘What does anyone want? Make decent money and hang around with their mates.’
Kasra Nouroozi, head of dispute resolution
In 1994, a young South African lawyer named Kevin Gold was sitting in his office at central London practice Bayer Rosin flipping a coin to decide the future of the firm he ran. ‘Heads or tails… Olswang or SJ Berwin…’
Continue reading “The USP – What is Mishcon’s secret formula?”
Addleshaw Goddard managing partner John Joyce is to stand for re-election for a second term at the helm of the firm.
Continue reading “Four more years: Addleshaws Joyce to run again as leadership election kicks off”
Simmons & Simmons announced today (6 December) a 5% increase in half-year income, bringing in revenue of £149m in the first six months of the 2016/17 financial year, up from £142m this time last year. Continue reading “‘Playing to our strengths’: Simmons posts 5% half-year revenue rise”
Addleshaw Goddard has made a play for King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) partners, taking on the firm’s former managing partner William Boss, as well as property partner Simon Tager and commercial real estate partner Michael Scott. Addleshaws has also hired commercial real estate managing associate Luke Harvey who joins as a partner. Continue reading “Another blow for KWM as Addleshaws hires former European head Boss along with two other partners”
AIM-listed Gateley has seen revenues jump significantly for the six months to 31 October 2016, up 19% from £29.6m to £35.2m. Gateley saw turnover improve 11% in the same period last year. Continue reading “‘Deals are being done’: AIM-listed Gateley’s half-year revenues soar 19% to £35.2m”
The remaining Magic Circle firms with a US presence have now matched Cravath, Swain & Moore‘s associate bonus payouts with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters the latest to send out memos, following Clifford Chance (CC) and Allen & Overy (A&O).
Continue reading “Freshfields and Linklaters last of the big four to match US associate bonuses”
The number of solicitors added to Ireland’s law society roll has increased by 275% to 1,347 solicitors over the past year in the wake of the Brexit vote, with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Eversheds and Slaughter and May making the most applications. Continue reading “Freshfields, Eversheds and Slaughters lead the pack as Brexit vote sparks record-breaking admissions to Irish roll”
