Francesca Fanshawe talks to Addleshaw Goddard’s senior partner ahead of big strategic decisions
There is a lot riding on the strategy Addleshaw Goddard will finalise this year, with the national thoroughbred still struggling to regain its form five years after the banking crisis severely hit its practice.
Magic Circle firm will continue to work with Three Crowns spin off
An undisputed leader in the field of arbitration, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has nonetheless been hit by the recent departures of London heavyweights Constantine Partasides and Paris-based partner Georgios Petrochilos, together with a team out of its German offices, bringing the latest exits to five.
Continue reading “Freshfields remains bullish in wake of heavyweight arbitration departures”
Sarah Downey reports on how a regional arm became the hottest accessory for London firms
How the fashions in professional services can change. Having long disdained moving into lower-cost regions, March saw another two top 20 City players announce ‘northshoring’ ventures, with Hogan Lovells and Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) confirming moves respectively into Birmingham and Manchester.
Despite Spanish M&A values dropping significantly in 2013 and amid the country’s continuing well-publicised debt crisis, two of Spain’s big four law firms have reported an uptick in turnover as a note of optimism returns to Europe’s fourth-largest jurisdiction.
Deal value in 2013 was down from $47.6bn to $32.2bn, according to mergermarket, but with a substantially improving pipeline post summer 2013, Uría Menéndez last month reported the strongest growth of the four: a 2.9% increase in revenues for 2013.
Singapore has over the past month dominated much of the legal agenda in Asia, starting with the renewal process early in March of its sought-after qualifying foreign legal practice (QFLP) licences.
Of the original six firms that were awarded a QFLP in 2008 and which came up for five-year renewal, Allen & Overy (A&O), Clifford Chance, Latham & Watkins and Norton Rose Fulbright had their licences renewed for another five years.
Continue reading “Singapore: QFLP renewals, hires for Milbank and a new office for Harneys”
Retail IPO surge on back of increasing confidence
Capital markets partners attest to an end to the jitters that have until now dogged the initial public offerings (IPO) market, with retailers including Poundland, Pets at Home and AO World in recent weeks making their debut on the London Stock Exchange (LSE).
With the latest figures from Thomson Reuters showing that the value of LSE listings is up by 677% compared to this time last year, Pets at Home listed in mid-March at a value of £1.2bn, gifting Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Clifford Chance (CC) and Travers Smith with lead mandates.
Continue reading “Adviser cheer as City float boom builds momentum with a string of major IPOs”
Top 30 UK firm Irwin Mitchell last month lost its place on energy giant National Grid’s legal panel to Shakespeares, following a review by UK general counsel (GC) and company secretary Karen Clayton.
The 700-lawyer firm was appointed for debt recovery services on the FTSE 100 energy company’s panel in 2011, at a time when it cut its roster of firms by 25% to 16.
Continue reading “Irwin Mitchell replaced by Shakespeares on National Grid’s UK panel after review”
Home entertainment company Virgin Media has completed an overhaul of its executive following its £15bn acquisition by Liberty Global in 2013, announcing Mine Hifzi as its general counsel (GC).
Hifzi was previously senior vice president of commercial and legal affairs for Scripps Networks Interactive, where she held a combined business development, commercial strategy and legal role. She also spent 14 years heading up the international legal and government affairs team at Discovery Communication, and prior to that worked in senior positions at Turner Broadcasting System Europe and United International Pictures.
In this month’s Global London special we report on the advances made by US firms in London, particularly in litigation. Senior players in London give their perspective.
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‘Although Magic Circle firms have offices in the US, they haven’t penetrated the biggest legal market in the world. Those firms haven’t got past a couple of cities on the East Coast – that doesn’t cut it in the US. There’s a lot of litigation in the US and those firms don’t have the same amount of coverage.’
Craig Shuttleworth, partner, Jones Day
Legal Business talks to lawyers on the frontline of the controversial and risky oil and gas business to explore the industry trends and challenges in-house legal teams face
2010 was arguably a turning point in the $5trn global energy market. That was the year that Brazilian oil giant Petrobras undertook a record-shattering $70bn equity offering ahead of unveiling a $224bn investment plan, on some measures the largest corporate spending programme the world has ever seen.
Continue reading “Power struggles – the challenges facing counsel in the $5trn oil and gas industry”
Our 12th annual Legal Business Global London survey reveals the pressure a mounting US offensive is putting on City stalwarts. Can the UK firms resist the advance?
Maurice Allen, co-managing partner of Ropes & Gray’s London office, knows all about the major players in the City, having taken in Clifford Chance (CC), White & Case and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer during his career. ‘All US firms are doing extremely well,’ he says. ‘A number of firms made significant investments – they’re hiring because the market is playing very nicely to the US firms.’ A biased view perhaps but one that is backed up by the data in this year’s Global London survey: overall headcount of the 50 largest global firms in the UK is up by 6% on the previous year to 4,624 from 4,382.
Having for years eschewed the City disputes market to invest in corporate and banking work, US firms have been piling into litigation of late
In retrospect, it seems strange that it wasn’t part of the game plan from the very start. US law firms – so long geared as much towards disputes as transactional work – came to London in force well over a decade ago… and all but ignored litigation.
It’s been a challenging period for European firms, but a growing band of players see a substantive City presence as core to their future prospects
Top-tier French outfit Gide Loyrette Nouel is the only continental European firm ever to have made our list of the 50 largest foreign firms in London and its fortunes in the Capital in recent years tell the story of many international firms post-Lehman. In 2008, it had 45 lawyers in the City. By 2013, this had fallen to 34. This is against a backdrop of poor financial performance in recent years, with turnover dropping 30% from £7.8m to £5.5m in the 2011/12 financial year, alongside a gross profit drop of 63% from £3.8m to £1.4m.
As the increasingly aggressive global patent wars between smartphone and tablet manufacturers continue to rage on, Legal Business asks leading IP practices what would happen if the final bell rang tomorrow
In November 2013, while acting for Apple in one of its seemingly never-ending patent battles with Samsung, Morrison & Foerster’s trial lawyer Harold McElhinny made his closing argument to the jury, which said: ‘When I was young I used to watch television on televisions that were manufactured in the United States: Magnavox, Motorola, RCA. These were real companies. They were well known and they were famous. They were creators. They were inventors. They were like the Apple and Google today.
Continue reading “Ask no quarter – getting ringside at the epic smartphone battles”
I used to pretend I decided to be a lawyer at 16. My sister made a visit to me in London and one of our smarter associates asked: ‘So, tell us when Phil decided to be a lawyer?’ My sister said: ‘You were eight, weren’t you?’ She blew my cover. I’ve always been attracted to it.
A year ago Cyprus was heading for disaster. The banking crisis had hit hard and predictions of where it would leave the country ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Hyperbolic headlines screamed that Cyprus would be forced to quit the eurozone and that everybody would be out of a job. Foreign investors would leave in droves, said the naysayers, so the island had better just go back to fishing and tourism as its mainstay.
Thankfully for the majority, and certainly for the Cyprus legal community, such prophecies have proved overdone. Depending on who you speak to there is really only a mix of cautious or, for some, more courageous optimism about where the Cypriot economy is headed and the benefits that will be realised in the next couple of years by its advisers.
Continue reading “Making bail – getting Cyprus back on its feet”
Barry Levenfeld is a regular visitor to Silicon Valley. The technology and life sciences specialist at Israeli firm Yigal Arnon & Co has to fly from Tel Aviv to San Francisco, via New Jersey or Los Angeles. Currently the journey takes around 20 hours.
However, he hopes that an online petition to establish a direct flight between Tel Aviv and San Francisco will lead to a more civilised journey. The proposed 14.5-hour flight will usher Israeli high-flyers straight into the growth company and venture capital centre of the world.
Continue reading “Scale-up nation – chasing Israel’s high growth clients”
Standout corporate mandates over the past few days have included a high profile run by Slaughter and May on deals including a £3.6bn bulk annuity buy-in over the ICI Pension Fund and Standard Life’s £390m acquisition of Ignis Asset Management, as Travers Smith and Kirkland & Ellis led on the $3.1bn acquisition of Nordic card-payment business Nets Holding. Continue reading “Deal Watch: Slaughters advises on £3.6bn ICI pension annuity buy-in and £390m Ignis buyout; Travers leads on $3.1bn Nets sale”
Partner promotions at the UK’s leading firms have largely been down so far down this year, as firms including Trowers & Hamlins, Nabarro and Berwin Leighton Paisner all promote fewer senior associates than last year, with Addleshaw Goddard maintaining a promotion level of eight associates. Continue reading “Partner promotions – Trowers, Nabarro and BLP see reduced numbers as Addleshaws holds on eight”
