Corporate veteran vows to maintain City focus when he succeeds Saul in May
The new senior partner at Slaughter and May, Stephen Cooke, has pledged to retain the firm’s City focus when he takes up his five-year term at the helm of the UK’s most profitable law firm in May.
2015 Legal Business Law Firm of the Year Osborne Clarke has continued its sound financial performance of the last few years, reporting impressive first-half results for 2015/16. The firm has outpaced its peers by a stretch, reporting a 25% rise in first-half turnover.
While not all firms disclose their revenues at the halfway point, Deloitte has found UK law firm revenues were up by an average of 4.5% for the first half of the financial year 2015/16.
Continue reading “Osborne Clarke still going strong as LB100 firms report first-half results”
One Crown Office Row (1COR) saw six of its barristers take silk in this year’s round of Queen’s Counsel (QC) appointments, as those selecting new QCs remain concerned at the low level of female applicants.
With this year’s 107 appointments marking a rise on last year’s round of 93, notable appointees included 1COR junior Marina Wheeler, the wife of Boris Johnson; Wilberforce Chambers barrister Tim Penny, a former member of the dissolved set 11 Stone Buildings; and 39 Essex Chambers’ Justine Thornton, the wife of former Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Continue reading “1COR tops QC appointments table as female applicants remain ‘stubbornly low’”
Continental Europe the next priority as firm chases larger international revenues
Kennedys formed another international association last month, this time with Buenos Aires firm Estudio Bunge – Bunge, Smith & Luchía Puig.
Continue reading “Kennedys global push continues apace as it follows insurance clients to Argentina”
Linklaters has selected Shanghai Capital Law & Partners and Shanghai Kai-Rong Law Firm as targets as management works to establish a Chinese law offering. The plans come as the firm’s Asia practice has been rocked by a series of senior exits.
Linklaters wants to become the first Magic Circle firm to practise Chinese law through new Shanghai free-trade zone rules after decades of protectionism in the communist country.
Continue reading “Linklaters picks merger targets in Shanghai as Asia exits stack up”
Skadden heads US M&A tables while Freshfields leads in Europe
Deal lawyers are unsurprisingly predicting another busy year in M&A as Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer emerged as the top corporate deal shops in the US and Europe respectively in 2015, according to Dealogic.
Victoria Young canvasses veteran lawyers on the outlook for bespoke financing in 2016.
It’s been flavour of the month for a lot of months now, but among leveraged finance advisers the conviction remains that 2016 will be another breakthrough year for alternative credit funds. Partners speaking to Legal Business say market conditions are ripe for such lenders, even as turbulence affects some larger sources of capital.
Linklaters has got the year off to a flying start for equity capital markets work, leading on the announced initial public offerings (IPOs) of CMC Markets and Countryside Properties, while also advising the underwriters as Clydesdale Bank plans to float.
The Magic Circle firm is providing English and US legal advice to online spread-betting company CMC Markets on its planned flotation on the London Stock Exchange in what will be the year’s first IPO.
FRESHFIELDS AND STEPHENSON HARWOOD CHECK IN FOR PRIORY SALE
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Stephenson Harwood led on the sale of the Priory rehab clinic. Freshfields advised US private equity group Advent International on the sale of the Priory Group, which operates more than 300 facilities, to Acadia Healthcare for £1.3bn in January. Acadia was advised by Stephenson Harwood.
Continue reading “Deal watch: Corporate activity in December/January 2015/16”
Victoria Young talks to Chris Lowe and Lothar Wegener about their ambitions for the firm
‘It’s not about: “Here’s an opportunistic piece – let’s grab that.” It’s about a continuous cycle of investment, not something which just happens.’
Chris Lowe, Watson Farley & Williams
Classicists holding to the maxim ‘first, do no harm’ will be looking in dismay at the debate on the UK leaving the EU. Because – perhaps less than six months ahead of the historic vote over the UK quitting the EU – it is still entirely unclear what the public will be voting for as the exit option.
There are four relatively mainstream paths in the event of Brexit, all fraught with challenges and uncertainty, as we address in this month’s Insight with Herbert Smith Freehills. But at heart, the out campaign is split between two camps: the protectionist conservatives looking to clamp down on immigration and reclaim sovereignty and the free marketeers dreaming of casting off the dead hand of Brussels diktat to reboot Britain as Singapore x 10. Not only are both positions in fundamental conflict but neither seems politically realistic, especially given that British regulation is generally as restrictive as EU equivalents.
Continue reading “What did Brussels ever do for us? The lawyerly view on Brexit”
Dear partner,
We know there is a lot of talk about the new generation of associates, how entitled and short term they are, and that either you or a colleague has been talking about what to do about the kids.
Continue reading “To Gen X partners and Millennial associates…”
Everywhere I go in legal circles these days, people ask about Dentons. How incredible it would have been even 18 months ago that this child of a second-line Illinois player and the most battered City law brand of the 2000s would attract such interest. Much of that attention is aghast that this dismissed institution has emerged somehow after a remarkable 2015 as the world’s most lawyered firm.
Given the chequered history, the scepticism is understandable and was shared by Legal Business as we sat down to hear the Dentons pitch to potential suitors for this month’s cover feature. But that presentation – backed by Dentons’ dynamic duo of Elliott Portnoy and Joe Andrew – is pretty good. Whatever the chinks in the armour (and there are chinks), the basic premise stands up. The legal industry called time on globalisation in the 2000s amid a series of troubled mergers, inter-firm competition and the fallout from the banking crisis. But that’s not to say there isn’t a good case for building a genuine global giant. Quickly.
Continue reading “Doing something radical – how Dentons sort of won me over”
Law firms are increasingly obsessed with the challenge of engaging their Millennial associates. Legal Business separates buzzword from BS
Just what is it that you want to do?
We wanna be free.
We wanna be free to do what we wanna do.
LOADED, PRIMAL SCREAM
It was a very different legal market in 2007 when Simon Harper and a group of colleagues at Berwin Leighton Paisner geared up for the launch of Lawyers On Demand (LOD). Amid boom time for legal services, few knew what to make of a flexi-lawyering business. Working on initial marketing, the idea was hit upon to draw on the famous freedom refrain from Primal Scream’s 1990 song Loaded (actually a sample from the cult film The Wild Angels). The intent was to reach a new generation of lawyers: a generation that in law and in other industries would increasingly be known as Millennials. The impact was immediate, recalls Harper. ‘What made LOD fly was the changing attitudes to work. Some of the CVs we got were amazing.’
In discussion at a partnership conference, LB editor-in-chief Alex Novarese lays out the prospects for a UK mid-pack
I recently held a one-on-one discussion with the senior partner of a mid-tier UK player at the firm’s partnership conference. As part of the prep, we sketched out some outline questions for which I wrote some notes to order my thoughts. Since it was flowing conversation and I wasn’t looking at those notes, what is below only loosely relates to what was said on the day. But since I often get asked these kind of questions and such Q&As have an off-the-cuff accessibility, I thought it would make a decent article. Mid-weight law firms wanting to know the Legal Business take on the market, read on.
***
With global M&A passing the $5trn mark in 2015, we ask the City’s leading corporate players if last year’s deal boom will carry on through 2016
WALKING THE TALK
‘We expect to see a resurgence in cross-border activity, which we saw in 2015 to a great extent. It’s always a question of whether or not the mega-deals will continue and the middle market typically follows. Some industry sectors we expect to be active like 2015, such as life sciences and energy. Disruption in the market these past few weeks has not gone unnoticed, but going into the year, there’s lots of activity and people talking.’
David Gibbons, global head of corporate, Hogan Lovells
Withers’ Filippo Noseda casts a weary eye over the latest attempt to bolster tax disclosure
In almost every field of legal work, privacy is regarded as a primary and legitimate concern to protect the interests of individuals and organisations. This was confirmed recently when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) struck down the US-EU data exchange agreement amid fears that data transferred to the US would end up in the hands of the US government – a fear fuelled by the revelations in 2013 by Edward Snowden of widespread electronic surveillance – as well as a US judge’s ruling ordering Microsoft to deliver information held on an Irish server. For the ECJ, the US-EU ‘safe harbour’ agreement violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that a private life is a human right and any interference with it must be proportionate and justified.
Continue reading “Privacy v transparency – incoming OECD tax rules are opening a new battle front”
English lawyers have long had an edge over their US and continental colleagues. English law was established early as the law of trade, business and increasingly projects – a throwback to the days of the Empire. This was a major driver of growth for UK-based firms in recent decades, but it is well known that New York law has become a rival to English law, especially in banking and finance, as corporates tap into the deep US debt markets.
However, more recently, we are seeing another trend that threatens the dominance of English law in Asia and further afield. Singapore law is increasingly becoming the go-to choice of governing law for Asia-Pacific cross-border deals and a strong choice for global deals.
Continue reading “Singapore swing – a credible threat to the dominance of English law”
A dismissed also-ran, Dentons has improbably reinvented itself as a pioneer taking legal globalisation to new heights. Critics snipe but can the firm live up to the soaring rhetoric?
‘We’ve obviously grown faster than any law firm ever,’ says Dentons’ iconoclastic chair Joe Andrew as he loads up a presentation designed for potential global suitors. Sitting alongside chief executive and friend Elliott Portnoy they make a slick pair, unsurprising given that this presentation has been practised on more than 100 law firm leaders around the world. The batting average was impressive in 2015. In a breakthrough year, six law firms across the US, China, Australia, Singapore, Colombia and Mexico agreed to join Dentons in a spree without precedent in the legal industry. A law firm written off as a global player in most quarters had become on some measures the world’s largest firm. Actually, it achieved that distinction less than a month into 2015 with the headline-grabbing tie-up with 4,000-lawyer Chinese giant Dacheng. Many in the profession are quick to predict a dramatic fall for this empire but everyone is talking about a firm that two years ago didn’t get a second thought.
My parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. My father came after being conscripted against his will in the Tsarist army and took a tortuous route via Germany and Paris. My mother came from Russian-occupied Poland. We lived in Stepney and my father waited for people to die and sold their clothes in Petticoat Lane market.
Before pop stars all we had were film stars. But there were glamorous lawyers like Hartley Shawcross, whose face was always in the newspapers as he was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg war trials. I’d never met a lawyer. It was a fantasy.
