Posted on

Magic Circle chase Chinese law as Linklaters launches Shanghai spin-off

The decision by Linklaters to spin off part of its Shanghai office in a bid to then merge with it at a later date, comes as part of a significant push by Magic Circle firms to practise local law in China.

Having already scoped out the local market for a suitable target to form a joint venture with under new Shanghai Free-Trade Zone (FTZ) rules, which permit domestic law firms to tie-up with international giants and practise local law, Linklaters has decided to go it alone.

Continue reading “Magic Circle chase Chinese law as Linklaters launches Shanghai spin-off”

Posted on

Dentons opens in Munich and looks to Warsaw for back-office

Three NRF laterals boost German practice

Dentons has targeted two more regions for European growth, launching an office in Munich alongside plans for a back office in Poland.

In a bid to boost its corporate offering in Europe, Dentons is launching its Munich office this summer with the recruit of three partners from Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF). Alexander von Bergwelt will serve as managing partner for the Munich office, and will be responsible for building and leading the new team. He specialises in corporate, private equity, restructuring and litigation.

Continue reading “Dentons opens in Munich and looks to Warsaw for back-office”

Posted on

Clyde & Co acts for Liberty House in bid to acquire Tata Steel’s UK assets

Clyde & Co is advising global metals group Liberty House Group, one of the key UK bidders looking to acquire Tata Steel’s UK assets.

In May, Liberty House confirmed it had formally submitted its bid for Tata Steel’s UK assets, including its biggest UK plant, Port Talbot Steelworks. The company has already successfully acquired Tata Steel’s Scottish plate-making facilities in Lanarkshire. The company is one of two UK firms to have submitted a bid, the other being management buyout group Excalibur Steel.

Continue reading “Clyde & Co acts for Liberty House in bid to acquire Tata Steel’s UK assets”

Posted on

Big month for renewables as Linklaters acts on offshore windfarms with combined worth £3.9bn

Linklaters has advised on the development and financing of the first two UK offshore wind projects to obtain financing under the government’s new ‘Contract for Difference’ (CFD) regime, worth £2.6bn and £1.3bn respectively.

The Magic Circle firm advised on the construction and financing of the offshore windfarm Beatrice located in the Outer Moray Firth, worth £2.6bn, and advised the developers on the £1.3bn long-term financing for the development of one of the world’s largest offshore windfarms, the Dudgeon windfarm off the east coast of England.

Continue reading “Big month for renewables as Linklaters acts on offshore windfarms with combined worth £3.9bn”

Posted on

David made Goliath – Kerr on Bird & Bird’s re-invention as a leading global TMT shop

Victoria Young talks to veteran chief David Kerr about growing pains and going even more global

There’s no doubt chief executive David Kerr has overseen a rapid extension of Bird & Bird’s international reach, with additions ranging from a major takeover in Australia, to acquisitions in Denmark, and associations around the Asia-Pacific region. But for Kerr – re-elected in March for another three-year term after spending two decades as chief executive – a new priority is consolidating and tightening the firm’s focus as it comes off a flat 12 months in a crowded mid-market.

Continue reading “David made Goliath – Kerr on Bird & Bird’s re-invention as a leading global TMT shop”

Posted on

Client profile: Bjarne Tellmann, Pearson

The plain-speaking Pearson law chief on driving change and pulling up your role models

Last month, Pearson’s high-profile senior vice president and general counsel (GC) Bjarne Tellmann was attending an executive leadership course at Harvard Law School when he bumped into Ben Heineman, General Electric Company (GE)’s former veteran legal head who is lauded by many for inventing the playbook for the sophisticated, globe-trotting GC.

Continue reading “Client profile: Bjarne Tellmann, Pearson”

Posted on

Life during law: Apostolos Gkoutzinis, Shearman & Sterling

Describe myself in three words? Passionate, impatient and aspirational.

I come from a small fishing town in northern Greece most lawyers would not know. A very traditional family, my father was a local civil servant, my mother a homemaker. We weren’t poor, nor rich. Modest in Greece in the 1970s meant no car, no television. But there was a drive to do better. My pushy mum, when I was ten, would give any Indian or Chinese mum today a run for their money!

Continue reading “Life during law: Apostolos Gkoutzinis, Shearman & Sterling”

Posted on

The Euro Elite 2016

The inaugural Legal Business report on Europe’s top 100 independent law firms.

Navigation

Market Reports

Continue reading “The Euro Elite 2016”

Posted on

The Euro Elite top 25 – Wars of Independence

While the advance of global law firms has stalled in recent years, high-quality independents have regained their purpose. Welcome to the Euro Elite, our first study of the advisers redefining the Continent’s legal market.

‘There’s economic value in the culture of a firm,’ says João Vieira de Almeida, managing partner of Portuguese firm Vieira de Almeida & Associados (VdA). If that culture is driven by independence, his sentiments are echoed by managing partners from Paris to Prague.

Continue reading “The Euro Elite top 25 – Wars of Independence”

Posted on

The Brexit debate: The big uneasy

The biggest issue facing business for a generation looms on 23 June with the Brexit vote. We assembled a group of GCs to find out how they are managing the unmanageable.

It is the business issue that has dominated headlines for months and represents for UK plc a potentially far more profound impact than any general election or change of government. The vote on 23 June on the UK’s membership of the EU promises ominous levels of uncertainty for business and unprecedented challenges for general counsel (GCs) trying to help their companies manage systemic risks. In the second part of a collaboration withHerbert Smith Freehills (HSF), we gathered a group of senior in-house counsel to assess what legal teams should be doing now… and potentially on 24 June.

Continue reading “The Brexit debate: The big uneasy”

Posted on

The Legal Business 100 debate: No quarter asked

As a resurgent mid-tier asserts itself in the UK legal market, our LB100 debate brings together City players to talk tactics, threats and sharpening your focus.

If the talking point of the UK legal market in recent years has been the sparkling performance of the City mid-tier, success is not leading to complacency. Bringing together a group of leading law firms to pick up themes from our recent annual Legal Business 100 report, it was clear that discipline, focus and a pronounced streak of insecurity means that the group are determined not to surrender the hard-won success they have achieved in the last five years.

Continue reading “The Legal Business 100 debate: No quarter asked”

Posted on

Euro elite: focus Germany – Weltmeister

German independents maintain elite status in a fiercely competitive market, despite the attention of some formidable global players.

‘Our market is one of the most competitive in the world,’ asserts Tobias Bürgers, co-managing partner of Noerr, Germany’s largest independent law firm with 427 fee-earners. In 2015, Noerr increased turnover by 5% to €207.7m.

‘Over the last eight years, we’ve had 70% revenue growth. We’ve outperformed the market proportionately, relative to other firms,’ he adds.

Continue reading “Euro elite: focus Germany – Weltmeister”

Posted on

Euro elite: focus Italy – La dolce vita?

A new generation is revitalising the performance of a trio of Italian leaders committed to remaining steadfastly independent

It’s been a hard decade for Italy, not least for its law firms: the product of a flat economy and relatively few deals. Even before the crisis, the economy had the lowest sustained growth of any OECD country. But there has been a recent renaissance, of sorts, with GDP optimistically predicted to rise by 1.6% in 2016, while concluded deals totalled €50bn in each of the last two years, according to KPMG.

Continue reading “Euro elite: focus Italy – La dolce vita?”

Posted on

Euro elite: focus France – Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Strong competition from UK and US firms in Paris and a penchant for tight, focused practices means French firms do not feature large among the Euro Elite.

With its lack of large full-service domestic law firms, the French legal market is unique when compared with other European jurisdictions. A traditional culture of non-partnership and a low threshold when it comes to international investment has created a legal landscape where the few larger French firms face fierce competition from smaller French boutiques, as well as the significant US and UK presence that dominates the Paris market.

Continue reading “Euro elite: focus France – Liberté, égalité, fraternité”

Posted on

Euro elite: focus Iberia – Pushing boundaries

Dominant in their home markets, law firms from Spain and Portugal have weathered the tempest by heading for far-flung locations.

As the EU’s fifth-largest economy, Spain is home to two of Europe’s legal giants, Garrigues and Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira: between them they have more lawyers worldwide than Linklaters – 1,410 and 970 respectively. In dwarfing the local competition, their reach is also significant. Madrid-based Garrigues has 34 offices in 13 countries and its Barcelona opponent, Cuatrecasas, 25 offices in 11 countries.

Continue reading “Euro elite: focus Iberia – Pushing boundaries”

Posted on

Euro elite: focus Central and Eastern Europe – The tiger by the tail

Price wars, political and economic tensions and prolonged attention from large Anglo-Saxon players in the region have made the going challenging for independent firms in CEE.

With a few notable exceptions, the last five years have seen some international law firms retreat from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – in part a belated reaction to the financial crisis – while others have downsized due to profitability problems. But for independent law firms, good opportunities remain in the region as local markets recover. On aggregate, the CEE economies grew by 3.6% last year and are projected to increase by 3.1% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Continue reading “Euro elite: focus Central and Eastern Europe – The tiger by the tail”

Posted on

Euro elite: focus Switzerland – Like clockwork

All the cultural stereotypes are ingrained in Swiss law firms – well-organised, independent and highly-impressive.

Six Swiss firms make the Euro Elite – impressive for a country of just 8.4 million people. But then the Swiss have a longstanding reputation for being well organised, well educated and well resourced, while the economy – lightly regulated and low taxed – consistently ranks as the world’s most competitive, enjoying the highest per-capita income of any major country, except Norway.

Continue reading “Euro elite: focus Switzerland – Like clockwork”

Posted on

Euro elite: focus Ireland – Back with a bang

Independent firms dominate the Irish legal market but a slowdown in inversion-style deals threatens a robust post-crisis recovery.

‘The Irish economy is very small, open and independent, which is to a large extent very dependent on international capital,’ says Brian O’Gorman, managing partner of Arthur Cox. ‘One of the things that helped Ireland recover from the financial crisis and beyond was the willingness of international private equity and in particular major US private equity to invest in Ireland.’

Continue reading “Euro elite: focus Ireland – Back with a bang”

Posted on

Euro elite: focus Baltics – All change

Consolidation among the biggest players in the Baltic states has led to the creation of an elite tier of independent firms.

2015 was a significant year for the Baltic legal market, with rapid consolidation between firms in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania creating, as Sorainen’s co-managing partner Laimonas Skibarka describes it, a ‘Baltic Magic Circle’.

Rival firms Raidla Lejins & Norcous and Lawin confirmed they had traded their Estonian offices to form two new firms – Cobalt and Ellex. In late 2015, Cobalt acquired the Baltic offices of Finnish firm Borenius, taking its numbers to 31 partners and 176 lawyers. Ellex (technically three firms under one common brand) sits at 30 partners with 167 lawyers, keeping it in close competition with its rival.

Continue reading “Euro elite: focus Baltics – All change”