Forsters lined up against Magic Circle firm Slaughter and May on Tata Steel’s deal to sell its European long products business to UK investment house Greybull Capital.
Continue reading “Steel deal: Forsters and Slaughters lead as Tata sells first chunk of UK business”
To avoid tax you have to do a thing which cuts your tax bill. Fail to do that thing and your tax bill is higher. But do it and you’ve avoided tax compared with an alternative world – economists call it a counterfactual but you and I would call it an overdraft – in which your tax bill is higher.
Continue reading “Guest post: On David Cameron and inheritance tax”
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has boosted its City-based investigations practice having relocated white collar partner Keith Krakaur (pictured) from New York to London to head the firm’s European government enforcement and white collar crime practice.
Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) and Jones Day are leading a raft of firms advising on a £1.4bn property deal between Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company and Delancey. Olswang, Mishcon de Reya and Simmons & Simmons are also acting on the joint venture.
Continue reading “HSF and Jones Day lead on £1.4bn deal between Qatari Diar and Delancey”
King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) has been ordered to pay its former client Commodities Research Unit International (CRUI) damages of £118,125 after facing a professional negligence claim at London’s High Court.
Maritime and insurance firm Ince & Co has continued to break away from long-standing tradition with the launch of a new consultancy firm.
Continue reading “Adaptation continues as Ince & Co launches non-legal consultant service”
Paris has been a hot spot for lateral hires this week, as firms including Squire Patton Boggs, Watson Farley & Williams (WFW) and Mayer Brown make international appointments across the board.
Sometimes in business what you correctly forecast can prove as problematic as what you get wrong. Because even when you manage the considerable feat of identifying what will happen in the world you are left with problems of unintended consequences.
Take the one-stop shop, a dominating idea during the legal industry’s defining 1990s-era globalisation as firms fought to become larger players that could serve clients across borders and product lines. The idea was that plc clients would narrow their adviser lists to smaller numbers of larger law firms. And this has largely come to pass – the trend of smaller panels has been well documented for years and the shift shows no sign of changing. There is also ample evidence that being a one-stop shop for high-end work across borders is highly profitable for law firms.
Continue reading “One-stop shopping is here but it’s not doing what it was supposed to”
These are tough times for the house that Stanley Berwin built, with exhibit A being recent news that King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) is undergoing a sweeping partnership restructuring set to trim its European business by nearly two dozen partners, or 15% of its ranks. While global managing partner Stuart Fuller (pictured) attempts to frame the move as repositioning KWM for the future, the storm clouds are ominous. The firm has suffered a string of significant exits in the last 18 months in its funds, litigation and corporate practices, losing several notable clients along the way. The firm was already going through a performance-driven partnership review set to manage out at least 10% of its ranks by this April (the firm’s German practice has struggled particularly). While the firm managed to achieve respectable growth in 2014/15 and increases in profitability in Europe, having to go through more major cuts is hardly an advertisement for its partnership.
Continue reading “KWM – ultimately a question of confidence”
These are tough times for another house that Stanley Berwin built, with exhibit B being the acrimonious end of merger talks between Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and Greenberg Traurig. While the practice fit between the two looked both convincing and distinctive, these were two firms with plenty of strong characters. Summing up the prospect of the proposed deal recently, Legal Business noted that proceeding with a union would be holding ‘the proverbial tiger by the tail’. So it quickly proved, as on 16 March the pair officially called time on the discussions amid some discontent from the US firm, which was unhappy at the messages being put out by BLP at the end of the talks.
Continue reading “The tiger that came to eat BLP’s culture for breakfast and other sorry tales”
Following its landmark combination with Dentons to create a 7,500-lawyer legal giant, legacy Dacheng is restructuring its practice to reduce the number of profit pools from 15 to five.
With Dentons striving to integrate what is now the world’s largest law firm by employee headcount, the China arm of the firm, headed by senior partner Jinquan Xiao, has carried out a reorganisation to create increased profit-sharing between the firm’s 44 Chinese offices.
Continue reading “Reform underway as Dentons shakes up profit-sharing arrangement in China”
Slaughter and May’s longstanding leader, Chris Saul, will launch a mediation boutique once he retires from his role as senior partner on 30 April.
Saul, who is retiring from the UK’s most profitable law firm after eight years at the helm, is planning to launch a mediation firm later this year. In what is an unusual move for a corporate lawyer, Saul will set up a mediation consultancy called Christopher Saul Associates this autumn to provide dispute resolution advice to corporates. Saul registered the new firm with Companies House at the start of March.
Continue reading “Outgoing Slaughter and May senior partner Saul to launch mediation boutique”
White & Case edges ahead of Latham in the City with £185m turnover
A series of US firms have seen London office revenues grow faster than other parts of their business as the European markets prove buoyant for players such as Latham & Watkins, White & Case and Debevoise & Plimpton.
Continue reading “Over the Atlantic: London outperforms stateside practices in top US firms”
Israel’s regional tensions contrast with optimistic hopes for foreign investment and a burgeoning economy. While war still rages over the border in nearby Syria, Israel’s start-up and hi-tech sector is flourishing. In addition, its nascent natural gas industry finally looks primed for substantial development.
Life is good in Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv, says Barry Levenfeld, a partner at Yigal Arnon & Co: ‘Economically and politically, Israel remains stable, while our neighbours are more dangerous by the minute. Sitting here on the 47th floor in Tel Aviv, looking across the Mediterranean and with all the restaurants and coffee houses below, you just wouldn’t know that any of this was going on.’ Continue reading “Value range – as the money pours in, can Israel takes its high-growth stars global?”
Tom Moore looks to the future of DLA as he meets the firm’s latest leader
Juan Picón’s face now adorns the WhatsApp group ‘Executive Rules’, used by DLA Piper’s leadership to share videos of karaoke nights, office yoga sessions and champagne moments, while running the world’s second largest law firm by revenue.
Set to take on the top legal role at Santander UK later this year, The Royal Bank of Scotland’s outgoing general counsel (GC) John Collins talks to Sarah Downey about his career and the growing recognition of in-house lawyers.
Tell me about the evolution of the GC…
Continue reading “Q&A: Royal Bank of Scotland general counsel John Collins”
Every time my father got a promotion we had to move. It trains you to fit in with new crowds. He worked for the Midland Bank. We lived in Carlisle, Shropshire, Birmingham, Kingston-upon-Thames and Manchester. It focused me on academic work as each new school had a different syllabus so I was always catching up.
I used to stand in our garage handing my father spanners. My favourite car in my youth was the Lancia Aurelia B20 GT, which was one of the classic Pininfarina designs of the ’50s. They were the embodiment of high-quality engineering. I went through a severe Lancia-buying phase in my 20s. I bought five!
Continue reading “Life During Law: Chris Saul, Slaughter and May”
Following the fallout of failed merger talks between Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) and Greenberg Traurig, it has emerged the UK firm’s leadership was an issue for the Miami giant.
The merger had promised to create a property and disputes giant across the Atlantic and one of the most distinctive law firms in the global market but was called off in March.
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been criticised for shutting down its investigation into alleged rigging in the foreign exchange (forex) market after it could not find sufficient evidence to prosecute.
Despite some of the world’s largest banks being fined billions for forex rate manipulation, the UK’s fraud watchdog dropped the probe in March without bringing any charges.
Continue reading “Fit for purpose? Critics round on SFO as forex charges are dropped”
