Mayer Brown, Macfarlanes and Gateley are all acting on the administration of parcel delivery company City Link following its collapse on Christmas Eve.
Continue reading “Dealwatch: Mayer Brown, Macfarlanes and Gateley act on City Link administration”
Antony Dutton, a leading disputes partner who had been at Dechert since January 2012, died suddenly in early January.
Continue reading “‘We are deeply saddened’: Dechert disputes star Antony Dutton dies”
From the Kirkland & Ellis site, under the topic Laterals Overview (I quote in full, emphasis supplied): ‘At Kirkland, the quality and experience of our lawyers are among our greatest strengths. We are committed to making a substantial investment in our lateral hires by fostering an environment in which they are seamlessly integrated into our Firm culture.’
File this in ‘Dep’t of Understatement.’
Continue reading “Guest post: Checkbook recruiting – will Kirkland’s strategy pay off?”
Kennedys has entered into a co-operation agreement with Chinese law firm AnJie as it further boosts its presence in Asia.
Continue reading “‘Closer ties’: Kennedys enters formal agreement with Chinese firm”
Accounts filed at Companies House have revealed Berwin Leighton Paisner made a strong financial recovery in 2013/14, with profit after tax rising 26% to £66.3m for the financial year, up from £52.4m in 2012/13, as the firm captured a greater volume of work and trimmed the size of its workforce.
Hogan Lovells has today (5 January) become one of the first LB100 firms to announce its New Year promotions with 24 associates made up to partner, including five in London within the finance, disputes and corporate practices.
Multiplex cinema operator Vue Entertainment International has appointed Euan Sutton as group general counsel, replacing Anne Whalley who left in September 2014 after holding the position for over eleven years.
Continue reading “A job with a Vue: Cinema chain appoints new group general counsel”
Approaching the holiday season, Asia, Europe and the US emerged as hubs for partner moves with Herbert Smith Freehills losing a prominent partner in Japan to Morrison & Foerster – which also acquired a German partner from in-house. In New York, Dentons made a rare lateral from Baker & McKenzie while Norton Rose Fulbright also hired from in-house.
Continue reading “Revolving Doors: Global 100 firms focus on international hires”
Having joined Legal Business as editor-in-chief in early 2013 with a brief to update and expand the title, we have since made a substantial number of changes and investments, many of which we had the time to either unveil or develop through 2014. That meant expanded coverage of in-house counsel and continuing to build out the title’s online platform, both its website and iPad edition, which is freely available to subscribing law firms. More than 30,000 people also get our email briefing, which is sent out at least four times a week. This push has had a dramatic impact on our online readership, increasing our daily audience ten-fold since we re-launched the site in April 2013. I’m expecting to build on that substantially again in 2015.
In the meantime, I’m signing off with a look back at our favourite pieces and projects of the year.
Continue reading “The 2014 edit – My favourite Legal Business pieces of the year”
After a tender earlier this year, the Ministry of Defence has finalised its revised major projects panel with ten firms making it on to the expanded roster.
At the same time as the MoJ has published Liz Trinder led research on litigants in person in private family law cases (disclosure, I was a member of the team) the MoJ have published the curiously described, Experimental Statistics: analysis of estimated hearing duration in Private Law cases, England and Wales, Ministry of Justice Ad-hoc statistics bulletin. I think the word experimental is accidental, confusingly hinting at some new methodology or, in research times, an experimental design. Neither are present here.
Continue reading “Guest post: litigants in person, never mind the quality – it’s length that counts”
Clyde & Co has posted a 5.3% increase to £178m in turnover for the first half of 2014/15 financial year as the firm has kept up its international ambitions with several office launches.
Continue reading “H1 2014/15: Clydes maintains revenue growth with 5% boost at half year”
Magic circle trio Clifford Chance (CC), Linklaters, and Allen & Overy (A&O) have all been gifted places on the extensive legal panel of Russian state-owned bank Vnesheconombank (VEB), alongside a host of other international firms including Hogan Lovells, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, White & Case, Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF), and Baker & McKenzie.
Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Travers Smith have all secured roles as private equity house Equistone Partners Europe sold its majority stake in A-Plan Insurance to HgCapital.
Private-client focused firm Withers has launched a presence in Australia, creating Withers SBL through an alliance with tax practice Balazs Lazanas & Welch (BLW) and corporate boutique SBL Shmith, as it continues its strategy of ‘expanding into key markets for high net worth clients’.
Having faced ongoing market criticism for losing multiple disputes partners from its City base in recent years, top ten LB100 firm Norton Rose Fulbright has developed a new strategy for the practice on an international scale in a bid to support growth outside the London office.
Shepherd and Wedderburn has managed to avoid making compulsory redundancies as it looks to complete the integration of Tods Murray, which it acquired earlier this year, into one office.
Mishcon de Reya’s executive partner James Libson has brought a judicial review against the British Home Secretary Theresa May and the UK Serious Fraud Office for assisting the Guinean government’s probe into Beny Steinmetz’s BSG Resources over bribery and corruption in the country.
The UK government has come under fire again over legal aid as the Court of Appeal (CoA) slammed how guidance for funding legal aid in immigration cases was unlawful.
Eversheds and Hill Dickinson have been newly appointed to Metro Bank’s lending and securities panel alongside 12 others, following the bank’s first review since 2012.
