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Legal profession forms united front on proposed cuts to legal aid

Last month court staff across the country took the unusual step of going on strike in a rare show of solidarity among all strands of the legal profession against the Ministry of Justice (MoJ)’s controversial proposals to slice £220m off the £1.2bn annual criminal legal aid budget.

The strike, while said by lawyers and court officials alike to have caused little disruption, stands out for being part of a series of measures taken by the ordinarily fragmented profession to emphasise its profound disapproval of reforms proposed by justice secretary Chris Grayling, including the introduction of price competitive tendering (PCT), the removal of the automatic right to legal aid for defendants with disposable income of more than £37,500 and the restriction of the right for defendants to choose their own solicitor.

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Calm down, it’s just an IPO

IPO market set for best year since 2007

While corporate partners continue to protest about the lack of large mandates this year, when it comes to the IPO market, conditions are undoubtedly looking up – for now. The London Stock Exchange has had the best year to date for UK company floats since 2007, with nine flotations to date totalling $4.5bn (£2.86bn), according to Dealogic.

This time last year there had been just one float, raising $48m (£31m).

Stock market volatility remains an issue, with deal lawyers including Norton Rose Fulbright equity capital markets (ECM) partner Mark Lloyd Williams – who advised on the February float of house builder Crest Nicholson Holdings (£553m) – referring to conditions as ‘choppy’ and indicating that the position is kept under review from week to week.

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Back at the gate: US invaders raise fresh questions over private equity status of CC and Linklaters

David Stevenson surveys a fast-changing buyout landscape to find US ‘barbarians’ once again pressing in on City leaders

Unfortunately for top City firms looking to defend their position in private equity, it takes more than a five-year freeze in credit markets and a sustained downturn in leveraged buyouts to stop foreign rivals trying to move in on their patch.

Such a dynamic has once again thrown scrutiny on Linklaters’ now decade-long effort to carve a credible position in the private equity market and the position of Clifford Chance (CC), by contrast traditionally established as the market leader in Europe’s buyout scene.

In the former case, the debate continues among peers (and some internally at Silk Street) over the extent to which Linklaters has forged a practice worthy of its much-vaunted general corporate team. In CC’s case, a purple patch in public M&A last year arguably did not extend to private equity, while the firm has had to contend with the resignation in April of global head of private equity David Walker for Latham & Watkins.

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A&O finance veteran joins Co-op

Alistair Asher takes on GC role as firm acts on major bank rescue

Securing a major deal and having one of your partners take a senior role with the same client is a nice trick to pull off but Allen & Overy (A&O) appeared to have managed that last month after securing a lead role on the Co-op’s rescue plan and ‘donating’ a veteran partner to the lender’s management team.

On 18 June, A&O confirmed that global financial institutions head Alistair Asher is leaving to join the Co-operative Bank as its new general counsel.

Asher will advise on the restructuring of the mutually owned lender and help speed up its management overhaul under its new chief executive Euan Sutherland. Asher retired on 1 July after 34 years with the Magic Circle firm and took on the new role immediately. The veteran partner had previously advised the Co-op on its 2009 merger with Britannia Building Society.

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Slaughters leads on Punch Taverns £2.4bn debt restructuring

Longstanding Magic Circle client warns creditors that it could face administration

Slaughter and May is advising Punch Taverns on its £2.4bn securitised debt restructuring as the UK’s largest pub company warns creditors it could face administration.

On 10 June a powerful group of lenders rejected plans to reduce the pub group’s interest payments to £32m a year. Slaughters, led by corporate partner David Johnson is advising longstanding client Punch, which owns around 5,000 pubs across the UK.

Under the revised plans, Punch asked senior bondholders to approve a reduction in debt service payments of £600m over five years. However, a special committee set up by the Association of British Insurers to represent lenders rejected the plans last month, dismissing them as ‘vague’ and only a marginal improvement on proposals submitted in March.

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DISSENT: Do you know Titian? Berating law firms on social mobility belies commercial realities

RollOnFriday founder Matthew Rhodes argues it is education – not an increasingly meritocratic profession – that is to blame for lack of social mobility in law.

Earlier this year Westminster School offered a mini-pupillage at a barrister’s chambers as a lot in a charity auction. The story hit the national press – The Guardian fumed: ‘Fancy a career in the law? A mini-pupillage with a criminal barrister can be Freddie’s for offers over £650.’ The Social Mobility Foundation complained, the Bar Standards Board felt obliged to investigate. All hell broke loose, over a week’s work experience for a teenager.

A bit of an overreaction? Given the kicking the profession is currently getting for not providing sufficiently broad access, perhaps it’s an understandable one.

I declare an interest: I went to Westminster. A few weeks before this story broke I attended a dinner for lawyers who had been at the school. The 80-odd guests that turned up included five High Court judges, the Attorney General and the President of the Supreme Court. From just one school. Alan Milburn, whose 2012 ‘Fair Access to Professional Careers’ report castigated the profession for not doing enough to encourage social diversity, would have had a seizure.

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Landmark Prest v Petrodel Resources verdict reached

Supreme Court decision hailed as end to ‘cheat’s charter’

The landmark divorce battle between Yasmin and Michael Prest came to an end last month as the Supreme Court on 12 June ruled Mr Prest should hand over properties held by companies under his control.

The ruling – the most significant divorce case to reach the UK’s highest court since the 2010 judgment in Radmacher v Granatino – has been touted as instrumental in establishing whether London remains a key forum for resolving big-money divorce cases. The case has also been watched for its impact on the court’s treatment of the corporate veil, which protects company assets.

The background to the long-running dispute – Prest v Petrodel Resources – is well trodden. In 2011, the High Court ruled that wealthy oil trader Mr Prest was worth at least £37.5m and should pay his ex-wife a £17.5m settlement. Included in that settlement was a £4m house in west London owned by one of Mr Prest’s companies, which Mr Justice Moylan ordered to be transferred in part payment of the settlement. However, last October Lord Justices Rimer and Patten allowed an appeal by the oil trader’s companies, ruling that on principle shareholders are not entitled to treat their companies’ assets as their own.

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The Client: David McLeish – Playtech

The former BLP partner on taking the GC seat at a fast-growing online gaming firm

When David McLeish left Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) to become general counsel (GC) of the world’s largest publicly-traded gaming software company, he figured it would present a new challenge. The FTSE 250-listed Playtech has certainly not disappointed. A fast-paced Israeli company with a pronounced work ethic, acquisitive mind-set and cash burning a hole in its pockets, the company is also operating in jurisdictions around the world where the licensing rules surrounding gambling are far from black and white.

McLeish left BLP in May 2012 to join Playtech, a client of four years, which was about to list on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. Describing his specialism at BLP as ‘corporate, gaming, hotels and leisure’, he says ‘the opportunity to become the GC of a FTSE 250 company was too good to turn down’. Like many private practice lawyers who have worked for a client for many years, he was also attracted to the idea of seeing deals through to the end and being part of a business.

Two months after his arrival, then AIM-listed Playtech – which provides branded software for online casinos, poker rooms, bingo games and sports betting for the likes of bet365, William Hill and Ladbrokes – floated with a market capitalisation of around £1bn. That figure is now £2bn and the company’s revenue has risen from €111.5m in 2008 to €317.6m in 2012.

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To soar or crash with an Asian giant

If you are going to finally do a global merger, it would be fitting for one of the most distinctive City practices to hook up with the great outlier of the Global 100. That is what is on the agenda for SJ Berwin as it this summer mulls an outline deal to combine with King & Wood Mallesons (KWM), the ground-breaking union between the top commercial law firms in China and Australia.

And what an outlier KWM is. When large mergers happen in the profession, a received wisdom among clients and peers soon takes hold. But since KWM was formed in March 2012, creating a 2,100-lawyer Asia-Pacific giant, consensus has resolutely failed to emerge. For some, it is a world-beater with an unmatchable position in the most powerful economic region of the 21st century. For others, it is a desperate act by two firms who had saturated their domestic markets and faced the awkward reality that their businesses won’t easily go global. After all, Australian and People’s Republic of China law travels badly and the increasingly heavily-lawyered and fee-sensitive Asia-Pacific region is currently struggling to live up to expectations.

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The daily grind – toil and tension as Hogan Lovells gets past the honeymoon period

It’s been three years since the trailblazing transatlantic pairing of Hogan & Hartson and Lovells. Legal Business assesses if the much-touted marriage is living up to expectations

Rarely for a June evening in London, the sun was shining on the rooftop bar as the Legal Business journalist by chance ran into a senior partner at Hogan Lovells. ‘I have to ask, as we’re doing a piece on the firm, three years on, how do you think it’s going?’ The reply was to the point: ‘I saw the e-mail telling us not to talk to your journalists. Well, what do you want to know?’

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Deferred Prosecution Agreements: Form over substance?

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) last week published a draft Code of Practice setting out their approach to the use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) in a move that lawyers warn will open the floodgates to unduly lenient case settlement.

DPAs are to be introduced by the Crime and Courts Act 2013, expected to come into force next year, and offer a company charged with criminal activity, such as corporate criminal liability under the Bribery Act, the chance to reach an agreement with a prosecutor without going to trial. Continue reading “Deferred Prosecution Agreements: Form over substance?”

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71 new shareholders and a Madrid chief – today on Baker Mac’s intranet

It says something about the evolution of the legal market when a single global law firm makes up more partners annually than the total partnership of a sizeable UK practice like Travers Smith but a handful of players are now in that camp.

Passing that threshold with ease is Baker & McKenzie, which has just promoted 71 partners globally as the firm also today (1 July) announced that leading arbitrator Jose Maria Alonso will take over as managing partner of its Madrid practice just over a year after he joined from Garrigues. Continue reading “71 new shareholders and a Madrid chief – today on Baker Mac’s intranet”

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Mills & Reeve adds DLA’s defendant insurance team

DLA completes withdrawal as CMS adds RPC head

Mills & Reeve and CMS Cameron McKenna boosted their offerings at opposite ends of the insurance spectrum in June, taking staff from the Birmingham office of DLA Piper and the City office of RPC respectively.

Top-50 UK firm Mills & Reeve acquired a nine-strong defendant insurance practice from DLA, marking the conclusion of DLA’s withdrawal from the lower margin area of law, as first announced last year. Continue reading “Mills & Reeve adds DLA’s defendant insurance team”

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Visa Europe’s GC joins A&O’s global antitrust practice

Allen & Overy (A&O) has hired Visa Europe’s general counsel (GC), executive vice president and company secretary Vanessa Turner as a partner in its global antitrust practice.

Turner will be based in the Magic Circle firm’s Brussels office, advising European and international clients dealing with EU and other regulators on merger clearance, cartels and other antitrust and competition matters. Continue reading “Visa Europe’s GC joins A&O’s global antitrust practice”

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Taylor Wessing to review secretarial jobs

96 London support staff put on notice of potential redundancy.

Taylor Wessing is to make 26 of its City secretaries redundant with all 96 secretaries in London put on notice pending a consultation.

The firm but expects the process to last for at least 30 days.

A statement released by UK managing partner Tim Eyles said: ‘The realisation of our strategy is dependent on us ensuring that all areas of our business are structured with a view to providing the best and most efficient service possible to our clients.

The redesign of our secretarial support is driven by that focus.’

Taylor Wessing in May announced that its revenues increased by 7% annually in 2012/13 to £228m, with UK revenues up 4% to £104.5m. The firm has yet to confirm partner profits for the financial year.

Taylor Wessing joins a growing list of major UK practices to announce job cuts in recent months including DWF, Berwin Leighton Paisner and Osborne Clarke, with 2013 shaping up to be the toughest legal labour market since 2009, when more than 2,000 jobs were cut in the UK.

Last month Ashurst launched a wide-ranging consultation with 350 support staff in London after announcing plans to launch a ‘north-shoring’ arm in Glasgow to provide back office and legal support.

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Financials update – Field Fisher Waterhouse pays the cost of merger mania

After a turbulent year that saw it unsuccessfully attempt merger discussions with both Laurence Graham and Osborne Clarke, Field Fisher Waterhouse has unveiled a disappointing set of financial results, with revenues and PEP both down.

The firm posted a 2.5% drop in revenues to £95m, compared to £97.6m in 2012, while profit per equity partner has decreased by 7% on the figure published in the LB100 last year, from to £434,000 £402,000 – following a 16% drop in 2011/2012. Equity partner numbers are up slightly, from 41 to 46. Continue reading “Financials update – Field Fisher Waterhouse pays the cost of merger mania”

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Hard-wired – meet the ‘tabloid’ lifting the lid on the world’s largest legal market

Since its 2006 launch, irreverent blog Above The Law has built a huge audience and given voice to an increasingly embittered community of US associates and law students. Legal Business reports on the ‘tabloid’ that brought transparency to the world’s largest legal market.

One afternoon in February 2009, the leader of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman’s corporate and securities practice, Robert Robbins, made a phone call in a train carriage on route from Washington to New York Penn station. Continue reading “Hard-wired – meet the ‘tabloid’ lifting the lid on the world’s largest legal market”

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Global 100: In the club

As the international legal market stratifies, the gap between executive class and economy is widening in the Global 100. Here we discover which firms have the dream ticket

Arnold & Porter, the Washington DC-based firm that specialises in regulatory, antitrust and commercial litigation, posted a 14% increase in revenue to $731m this year, its second successive year of double-digit growth. In fact, since Legal Business first reported the finances of the leading global law firms in 2004, there has not been a single year when Arnold & Porter hasn’t posted an increase in revenue.

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Making connections – how in-house counsel swap ideas (and business cards)

Legal Business assesses the options for senior in-house counsel looking to swap ideas (and business cards) with their peers

Buy-side lawyers are a continual target for a whole host of networking and marketing ‘opportunities’ that may – or more often may not – be useful. As private practice law firms look for ways to deepen their client relationship in a market where that relationship is increasingly de-personalised, others have clocked on to the fact that, to get close to private practice, you need to pull strings among their clients.

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Global 100: Scheduled departures

Asia continues to dominate when it comes to new offices opened by Global 100 firms. But despite the attraction of exciting Eastern destinations, there are growing questions as to whether the travel is paying off.

‘People have the view that Asia is a rice bowl and they are waiting to gorge themselves,’ says a partner at a US law firm based in Singapore. Given the trends in recent office openings by the Global 100, it would appear there are still plenty of firms queuing up to have their fill. Over half of the 41 Global 100 firms that opened new offices in the last 12 months chose to open them in Asia, adding up to 28 new offices in the region in total, with Seoul and Singapore by far the most popular destinations. This contrasts significantly with last year when just ten Global 100 firms launched ten new offices across Asia.

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