As part of an ongoing restructure, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has made three key appointments to its legal team with hires from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Hogan Lovells.
Continue reading “CMA plucks from Freshfields and Hogan Lovells in ongoing restructure”
Ashurst litigation veteran Ed Sparrow has taken on the chairman post at the City of London of Law Society (CLLS), amid a turbulent time for legal representative bodies.
Continue reading “‘Challenges ahead’: Ashurst litigation veteran Ed Sparrow takes on top CLLS job”
The best Freshfields corporate lawyer Silk Street ever produced is now leading Linklaters, with incoming senior partner Charlie Jacobs ushering in a very different style at the City giant to the technocratic revolution pushed through by previous regimes.
Continue reading “Comment: Winning hearts and minds (but mainly hearts) at Linklaters”
Shearman & Sterling‘s London tax head Sarah Priestley has now also quit the firm, closely following in the footsteps of global private equity chief Mark Soundy who confirmed he is leaving the firm earlier this week.
Continue reading “Shearman London tax head Priestley quits as exits mount for US firm”
Hogan Lovells‘ Hamburg office managing partner Eckard Schwarz has resigned over claims of illegal surveillance by an employee of former client EWE Group.
Continue reading “Hogan Lovells’ Hamburg head resigns amid spying investigation”
Pinsent Masons and Linklaters are advising on Teva Pharmaceutical Industries’ sale of UK and Ireland business Activas Generics for £603m as the Israeli firm seeks to divest assets following last year’s takeover of Allergan.
Ince & Co‘s Singapore venture, Ince Law Alliance, has hired three more lawyers and has appointed a new managing director to its Singapore team as it rebuilds its Asia offering. Continue reading “Ince & Co replenishes Singapore hub with senior appointments”
Beleaguered Ashurst has refreshed its board amid a turbulent time for the LB100 firm with London-based partner Jason Radford and Munich’s Bernd Egbers taking spots.
Continue reading “Ashurst refreshes management board as firm faces turbulent period”
On April Fool’s Day this year, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co notified its clients that it had sustained an email hack. It instantly became the world’s best-known law firm following the leak of 11.5 million documents, cherry-picked by global media outlets, that revealed confidential client information. The Panama Papers made news and so did offshore law firms. Again.
But for every offshore firm, regardless of jurisdiction, the Panama Papers leak was no laughing matter: the inevitable public outcry further fuelled the enduring debate over tax and transparency. Continue reading “Standing apart – the offshore fallout from the Panama Papers”
‘The morning after the night before, there was stunned silence,’ says David Cadin, managing partner at Bedell Cristin. For offshore law firms, the long-term implications of Brexit are no clearer than for their onshore counterparts and they are equally loath to make predictions when uncertainty continues to surround terms for the UK’s departure from the EU.
As Antonia Hardy, Cayman Islands managing partner of Walkers, puts it: ‘In terms of offshore access for financial services, no-one knows yet – like everything to do with Brexit the answer is possibly and hopefully.’ She offers a very positive take: ‘Offshore centres have always been required to apply for European access independently of the UK and so we do not foresee any negative impact from the Brexit decision.’
Continue reading “Aftermath – the offshore world post the Brexit vote”
To mark this year’s Global 100 report, we gathered a group of senior figures at the top of Tower 42 to debate the big issues facing Big Law
Alex Novarese, Legal Business: How are market conditions looking now?
David Bickerton, Clifford Chance: Too early to tell. Clearly there was a pent-up demand leading up to the referendum in June. What is interesting is whether all the optimism that partners are feeling will manifest itself in transactions come the fourth quarter.
With high-billing duo Charlie Jacobs and Gideon Moore taking the helm at Linklaters there is renewed swagger on Silk Street. Will it be enough to revive the City leader after a troubled post-Lehman run?
For a young South African who saw law as a stepping stone to business, Charlie Jacobs has had quite a journey. Something of an anomaly at Linklaters in the early 1990s, when even by the standards of the City elite, the firm was ‘stiff and English’, Jacobs found the place ‘a bit intimidating’ in the early years. But if he truly lacked confidence then, he hid it well. Now, after nearly a decade as Linklaters’ unrivalled corporate star, the youthful-looking 50-year old has this month begun his role as the City giant’s new senior partner for a five-year term.
Continue reading “Rain men – goodbye Harvard Kool-Aid, hello plain speaking at Linklaters’ c-suite”
Ambition, Millennials, corporate guff – we gathered more than 60 GCs and FT columnist Lucy Kellaway to debate the pleasures and perils of climbing the greasy pole
Should you tweet? How do you relate to the mysterious breed of co-workers called Millennials? How should lawyers navigate the rampant office politics of a major plc when they make the move in-house?
Continue reading “GC Powerlist Summer Reception – Home House truths”
What does leadership mean in a region where the role of the in-house lawyer is rapidly evolving?
‘Becoming an in-house lawyer has not traditionally been a desirable career path for Asia’s top graduates,’ says Amy Ng, general counsel (GC) for the Asia-Pacific region at global real estate company CBRE. ‘But we are seeing a lot of change now in the number of people leaving private practice to work for a business.’
Continue reading “The art of leadership in Asia – an evolving role for legal heads”
Leadership training has until recently neglected the growing ranks of GCs. To begin our Insight special with Reed Smith, we assess the educational options for in-house counsel striving to meet growing skills demands
In 2012 the MBA degree established itself as the most popular subject of postgraduate education in the US, accounting for more than a quarter of all enrolments according to the US Department of Education. Along with the usual diet of macroeconomics, management theory and financial accounting, MBA programmes have ensured that those who seek to carve out a corporate career focus on one quality above all others: leadership.
Continue reading “Taught leaders – executive training for the ambitious GC”
An ambitious generation of in-house counsel is determined to take on leadership roles, despite corporate pressure to stay in the box. We ask GCs what it takes to break out as a leader
Are in-house counsel ready to be business leaders? It seems a strange question to ask given the level of education and training of most in-house lawyers and the dramatic expansion of the size and responsibilities of legal teams over the last 15 years.
And yet, leadership remains an issue that hangs ominously over the careers of in-house counsel. As they take on work that once would have gone to law firms and deal with mounting organisational, legislative and regulatory complexity they are often pushed towards the technically-demanding side of their legal role. Meanwhile, colleagues from finance, marketing or sales teams remain far more likely to be promoted to senior leadership roles within the company.
Continue reading “The next step – meet the GCs determined to seize leadership roles”
We teamed up with Reed Smith to ask which skills the GCs of tomorrow will need to lead and what the future holds for in-house leadership training.
Continue reading “Leadership and the modern GC: a special report”
Inevitably with an event as dramatic as Brexit, the unintended consequences keep coming. One of the less noted is the 11th hour reprieve it has granted the Law Society, which in the spring was looking on course to lose much of its fund-raising powers as part of a government review.
Obviously, the administration of Theresa May has got more pressing matters on its plate than legal service regulation. Yet the review kicked off by the Treasury has still put in train a sequence of reviews/land grabs/shoulder-shoving by our main regulatory and representative bodies.
Continue reading “A period of silence from the profession on access to justice would be welcome”
‘Do not come to a problem from dogma or rigid ideology.’
Tony West, PepsiCo
As part of our Insight report on GC leadership, we asked senior in-house counsel how to lead from the front
‘You’ve got to be conscious that you cast a powerful shadow in the team so you need to be consistent in behaviour, beliefs and core message. You need to paint a clear vision and strategy and ideally create it with the team to get buy in. A good leader stretches the team while trusting it to do its own thing.’
Suzanne Wise, group general counsel and company secretary, Network Rail
As Legal Business gathered a group of the legal elite at the top of Tower 42 to debate the issues facing the world’s top law firms – the question arose as to whether anything truly threatens law’s premier league.
Certainly the going has been more challenging since the banking crisis for all sections of the legal industry, whether you are betting on ‘flight-to-quality’ or ‘more-for-less’, but overall the Global 100 looks no nearer to an existential threat or much meaningful consolidation. AI? The accountants? New Law providers? The former reflects a genuine force set to substantially change the industry, though it is not apparent whether that will come at the expense of high-end law firms. The latter two players have yet to come near to living up to the fanfare made for them.
Continue reading “Superstar clients and super-threats to global law”
