Allen & Overy (A&O) has become the first Magic Circle firm and the latest of the UK’s top 20 to launch in Myanmar, despite ongoing concerns over the risk factors for corporations looking to invest in a republic with a legacy of political instability and human rights atrocities. Continue reading “Allen & Overy latest to launch in Myanmar despite ongoing risk factors”
Partner promotions: Osborne Clarke makes up five in the UK after Stephenson Harwood promotes City duo
Osborne Clarke (OC) has made up five new partners in its 2014 promotion round across the UK, constituting the firm’s highest-ever UK figures in three years, following Stephenson Harwood’s announcement last week that it has made up just two City associates to partner this year. Continue reading “Partner promotions: Osborne Clarke makes up five in the UK after Stephenson Harwood promotes City duo”
‘It is now the strain will show on firms’: Gordon Dadds MP talks takeovers and strategy after the fall of Davenport Lyons
After a series of failed merger talks, the surprise takeover of beleaguered West End firm Davenport Lyons by Gordon Dadds is, according to Gordon Dadds’ managing partner Adrian Biles, indicative of the wider strain that firms will start to feel as the recovery kicks in. Continue reading “‘It is now the strain will show on firms’: Gordon Dadds MP talks takeovers and strategy after the fall of Davenport Lyons”
‘Self-interested’ Law Society stripped of power to appoint SRA chair
Just days after the Legal Services Board (LSB) chairman delivered a scathing speech accusing the Law Society of being entirely self-interested, the representative body has been stripped of its power to appoint the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s new chair, in a move designed to give the regulator greater independence. Continue reading “‘Self-interested’ Law Society stripped of power to appoint SRA chair”
Channel 5’s £450m sale to Viacom sees Rosenblatt, Shearman, Olswang and Lewis Silkin acting
Channel 5’s £450m sale to Viacom has thrown up roles for Rosenblatt Solicitors; a London-based Shearman & Sterling team; Olswang and Lewis Silkin as the US broadcasting giant snaps up the UK’s only privately owned commercial television channel. Continue reading “Channel 5’s £450m sale to Viacom sees Rosenblatt, Shearman, Olswang and Lewis Silkin acting”
Shock horror: economic revival makes it as impossible as ever to make partner
It’s not going to come as a huge shock to our readership of jaded veterans to hear this but the 2014 promotion rounds from the UK’s top law firms have confirmed that the striking revival in business confidence over the last 12 months has made pretty much no improvement in partnership prospects.
Yes – my back-of-the-envelope calculations are that the Magic Circle plus Herbert Smith Freehills, Norton Rose Fulbright, Hogan Lovells and Ashurst have added only 193 individuals to the club despite fielding between them partnerships of well over 5,000. The 2014 promotions round at these firms is equivalent on average to less than 4% of their partnerships – well below the replacement rate needed to sustain their ranks.
Continue reading “Shock horror: economic revival makes it as impossible as ever to make partner”
Worth the money: Barclays to introduce value accounts for upcoming legal panel
Failure to meet value targets set to result in firms partially refunding banking giant
As Barclays’ long-awaited review of its global legal panel moves closer to completion, it has emerged that the bank is set to shake up how it interacts with its external advisers with the introduction of corporate value accounts.
Continue reading “Worth the money: Barclays to introduce value accounts for upcoming legal panel”
The Crown Estate’s Peeke to join Land Securities in legal head role
Land Securities, the UK’s largest listed property company, has hired The Crown Estate’s deputy head of legal Alex Peeke as head of legal, taking over the day-to-day conduct of the legal function and operations and reporting to group general counsel (GC) and company secretary Adrian de Souza.
Peeke has been with The Crown Estate, which owns an £8bn-plus portfolio of commercial property, since 2009. He is responsible for the day-to-day management of legal risk and is the legal lead on joint ventures, which have become the most important feature of the implementation of The Crown Estate’s redevelopment strategy for its prestigious Central London estate.
Continue reading “The Crown Estate’s Peeke to join Land Securities in legal head role”
DISSENT: A precarious professionalism
UCL’s Richard Moorhead argues the integrity and professionalism that City lawyers take for granted is all too easily swayed
The practice of law has flipped from vocation to business. Law firms and individual lawyers are measured explicitly in predominantly economic terms. Profit per equity partner (PEP) and other indicators trickle down firms through targets and bonuses. Hourly rates are the oil that greases this engine. Alongside that is the somewhat servile claim that lawyers are not deal breakers or pettifoggers, but business-focused advisers, and business-focused advisers for whom the client comes first.
Latest partnership rounds confirm another tough year to make the grade at City leaders
Partnership promotion figures unveiled in April saw a slight improvement on the dwindling numbers seen in earlier announcements, although still fall largely short of the 5% estimated to be needed to maintain partnerships at their current levels.
Linklaters and Clifford Chance (CC) made up 21 partners apiece and Herbert Smith Freehills 23, as Norton Rose Fulbright unveiled a post-merger figure of 46, and Ashurst similarly revealed it will make up 15 partners in the first round since its merger last year with Australia’s Blake Dawson.
Life during law: Helen Burton
The first deal I worked on when I qualified at Allen & Overy (A&O) was for David Morley and everything went wrong. On the Monday morning, I went to his office and he saw the look on my face and said: ‘Helen, don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.’ I turned around and walked out, but that stayed with me. The job of a lawyer is not to bring problems but to find solutions.
Irwin Mitchell’s outgoing chief executive John Pickering on change in the sector and why it was time to hang up his boots
Announcing his retirement last month, Irwin Mitchell’s longstanding head and current group chief executive John Pickering pointed to ‘the changing legal sector’ and his desire for the firm to have settled long-term senior management.
Speaking to Legal Business, Pickering, who joined the firm as an articled clerk in 1977 and now plans to pursue non-executive director positions elsewhere, explains his reasoning behind the decision.
BLP’s head of banking and finance litigation defects to King & Spalding
Hughes’ exit follows spate of departures from international firm
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP)’s head of banking and finance litigation, David Hughes, is set to leave the firm to join the litigation team at King & Spalding.
Described by one former BLP partner as a ‘big-hitting litigator’, Hughes specialises in asset recovery (including ships and aircrafts) and security enforcement involving complicated capital markets products, as well as the enforcement of bond structures and International Swaps and Derivatives Association contracts. He also advises clients on fraud, financial irregularities and money laundering issues.
Continue reading “BLP’s head of banking and finance litigation defects to King & Spalding”
Senior Clydes ship finance partner joins Curtis Davis Garrard
Senior maritime player Matt Hannaford is leaving Clyde & Co’s transport finance group with a team of three to join specialist shipping boutique Curtis Davis Garrard (CDG).
The commercial shipping partner, who is particularly recognised for his work in ship finance, will join CDG alongside legal director Owen McHugh, who will join CDG as a partner.
Continue reading “Senior Clydes ship finance partner joins Curtis Davis Garrard”
‘A treasure trove for potential claimants’ – forex scandal to bring windfall of instructions to UK firms
US class action filed ahead of DoJ findings targets more than a dozen investors
UK financial disputes partners are gearing up to take on lucrative ‘break the bank’ instructions in the now global investigation into foreign exchange manipulation, as the US class action against a host of investment banks continues to grow, gifting Allen & Overy (A&O) with a lucrative New York mandate.
The class action, which has been filed ahead of any findings by the Department of Justice (DoJ) over whether traders colluded to manipulate the estimated $5.3trn a day foreign exchange market (forex), most recently saw over a dozen investors, including several large US pension funds sign up to an antitrust lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York.
CMS junior partners to pay up to £50k in response to HMRC shake-up
CMS Cameron McKenna has called on its fixed-share partners (FSPs) to make a substantial contribution of capital in light of HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) recent overhaul of the way partnerships are taxed.
Members of the junior partnership that fall into band one of the firm’s four-tiered remuneration structure have been asked to contribute around £35,000 to £50,000 each. With 90 partners in this bracket, this means a total capital investment of up to £4.5m.
A partner at the firm told Legal Business: ‘The firm doesn’t necessarily need the money – it’s not a call for borrowings or to meet debt requirements. It’s a call to even out the capital positions across the various levels of the partnership. People were not necessarily happy taking on more borrowings but it hasn’t caused any ructions across the junior partnership.’
Continue reading “CMS junior partners to pay up to £50k in response to HMRC shake-up”
HSF shakes off post-merger politics in favour of sole global corporate head as Ferraro takes over
Setting aside the notoriously difficult post-merger politics of selecting one partner to run a core practice area, Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) in mid-April announced that joint global head of corporate Mike Ferraro will this month take over as sole head.
Fellow co-head Patrick Mitchell will, after four years as head of corporate, take up a new role as head of the firm’s infrastructure practice in both the UK and EMEA. Mitchell will work closely with Andrew Clark, head of projects for Australia and Asia, in the continued development of what the firm describes as ‘this strategically important practice’. Mitchell will also maintain his role in developing the firm’s presence in Germany.
European deal wave anticipated amid growing market confidence
Holcim/Lafarge merger and Vivendi’s SFR acquisition lead the way
Corporate partners are forecasting the next big European M&A wave after deal values this quarter shot up, partly on the back of ready debt finance and growing market confidence. Such conditions have supported a run of lucrative mandates, including the €40bn merger in April of cement companies Holcim and Lafarge and the acquisition of Vivendi’s phone unit SFR by cable group Altice for a total value in excess of €17bn.
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Linklaters and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer were among a host of firms advising on Holcim’s combination with Lafarge, a deal that, subject to regulatory approval, will create LafargeHolcim, the world’s biggest cement maker.
Continue reading “European deal wave anticipated amid growing market confidence”
Whose money making machine? Not all law firms will be richer in a bank-lite world
Cov-lite, cov-loose and even now cov-lame – in some pockets of the finance market we are back to the boom days. All we need is a couple of headstrong private equity partners to quit Linklaters for a more sponsor-facing platform and we’ll be right back to 2006. On second thoughts…
As our cover feature this month makes clear, the debt markets are going through not only a substantive revival but the non-investment sector is rapidly being dragged towards a US-style dynamic. This means European borrowers increasingly tapping capital markets and the role of banks reducing amid competition from other debt providers. The related vogue for upper mid-market and larger buyouts to be backed by high-yield bonds and US loans has obvious implications for City advisers since it tilts the playing field heavily in favour of New York law and US advisers.
Continue reading “Whose money making machine? Not all law firms will be richer in a bank-lite world”
Behind the veil – Can Islamic finance live up to the sales pitch?
‘You can’t be a credible financial centre without having a credible Islamic finance programme,’ says Qudeer Latif, head of Clifford Chance’s global Islamic practice. With studies expecting the Muslim population to grow twice as fast as the non-Muslim demographic over the next 20 years global financial institutions and governments are falling over themselves to offer Islamic finance products.
According to EY’s latest study of the global Islamic finance market, the total amount of Islamic assets held by commercial banks was expected to have grown by around 40% from 2011 to 2013, from $1.3trn to $1.8trn. 78% of international Islamic assets are held in Qatar, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, UAE and Turkey. In Qatar, for example, Georges Racine, director of Swiss firm Lalive’s Doha operation, says that Islamic banking has grown quicker than the banking sector as a whole over the past few years as a result of its government’s supportive measures.
Continue reading “Behind the veil – Can Islamic finance live up to the sales pitch?”