CMS Cameron McKenna will reform its partnership remuneration model on 1 May, enabling salaried partners to become equity partners quicker but increasing management scrutiny on performance.
After 18 months of deliberation, the firm voted in favour of discontinuing its salaried partner level recently, achieving the required 80% majority needed to push the reforms through.
Continue reading “CMS Cameron McKenna overhauls partnership structure”
Taylor Wessing (TW) has secured a prominent lateral hire to its intellectual property team, recruiting the head of Harbottle & Lewis’ IP Group Mark Owen.
The arrival of Owen will add further strength to TW’s leading soft IP practice. The former Clifford Chance lawyer has advised significant media and entertainment clients on copyright, designs, trade mark, database rights and data privacy issues for the last 25 years.
‘Mark’s focus on new media clients and digital convergence issues aligns perfectly with Taylor Wessing’s TMT offering, while his excellent contacts and experience in Silicon Valley will be a real asset to our international practice,’ said Tim Eyles, Taylor Wessing’s UK managing partner.
Continue reading “Taylor Wessing snares Harbottles IP head Owen”
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has recruited former acting head of the criminal division at the Department of Justice (DoJ) to bolster its US white-collar practice.
Matthew Friedrich joins from US litigation firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, where he had a partner since 2009. Prior to this, he spent 13 years at the DoJ in various leadership roles including the assistant attorney general for the criminal department, where he managed a team of 740 individuals on fraud, intellectual property and cross-border transactions by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
Continue reading “Trophy US hire for Freshfields as it lures former head of DoJ’s crime division”
It’s a sobering sign of what we’ve been reduced to when we’re praising firms for doing the obvious. This time it’s the pioneering technique of holding a little cash back to cover investment, working capital and future partner drawings, rather than doling it all out to equity partners almost as soon as it comes through the door.
Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW) and Dentons are the latest proponents of the dark art of prudence – FFW confirming it would hold back its ‘special’ profit distribution in March, while Dentons has delayed some payments over the last 18 months from the 2011/12 financial year.
Continue reading “Capital ideas – the law firm model is as stable as you make it”
South East stalwart Thomas Eggar is to absorb City boutique Pritchard Englefield as the run of consolidation within the UK top 100 continues.
The merger, which will go live on 1 May and roughly doubles the size of Thomas Eggar’s City arm, will see the 58-partner firm increase its revenue from £36m to £42m. The duo will unite under the Thomas Eggar brand.
The acquisition of the 30-lawyer City practice has been billed as substantially bolstering Thomas Eggar’s profile as an institutional adviser.
Pinsent Masons is to cut 13 fee-earners from its employment practice in a third round of redundancies since the firm’s merger with McGrigors last May.
The firm was keen to emphasise that this latest round of cuts was unrelated to the 62 support roles lost last year but instead come as a result of department restructuring.
In a statement, Pinsents said: ‘As a firm we continue to grow and have made a number of strategic investments over the past 12 months in those sectors and markets where we see most potential for growth.
Continue reading “Redundancies: Pinsent Masons to lose 13 fee-earners in employment reshuffle”
Dundas & Wilson has lost private equity partners Simon Sale and Nadim Meer to Mishcon de Reya, the latest in a series of partner exits from the Scottish firm.
Sale and Meer will move to 300-lawyer Mishcon, along with senior associate Allison Keyse, once the terms of their exits have been agreed. They will join current Mishcon private equity partners Kevin McCarthy and Andrew Rimmington and the intention is that they will bring clients with them. Before joining Dundas, both worked at Hammonds (now Squire Sanders).
Continue reading “Dundas & Wilson woes continue as it loses private equity duo to Mishcons”
TMT specialist Olswang has re-elected long-time head David Stewart as chief executive for another three years.
Before being elected chief executive, Stewart was the firm’s managing partner since 2007. He has been a driving force behind the corporate media specialist’s attempt to refashion itself as a credible international player. As important, Stewart was charged with becoming the public face of Olswang when thrusting and high profile chief executive Jonathan Goldstein announced his departure six years ago.
Continue reading “Stewart steps out of Goldstein shadow as Olswang hands popular head another term”
The firms that appear in Global London are the 50 largest non-UK originated firms in London, ranked by headcount.
Partner and lawyer numbers were all requested as full-time equivalent averages for 2012. All partner hires were up to and including February 2013. Total lawyer numbers include partners, associates, assistants and trainees but not paralegals. An average exchange rate for the year 2012 was used for Global London. This was £1=$1.58474. Full table follows…
Legal Business looks at five US firms that have recently made strategic moves in the City
With the collapse of Dewey & LeBoeuf, for many US law firms in London 2012 was about opportunism and securing what few advances a turbulent market offered. Nonetheless, a growing band of US-bred advisers are making their mark in the Square Mile. While overall numbers tend to obscure the progress of US practices in London as a whole, recent years have seen a growing band of firms make significant tactical inroads in areas as diverse as funds, litigation and debt securities.
Tony Angel and the cute teddy bear next to him greeted me as I found my new desk – a Legal Business cover from 2003 and a personal favourite, a brilliant dissection of Linklaters’ painful reinvention as metric-driven world-beater. I soon dug out other classics, including the 2009 Icarus-themed investigation into pre-collapse Halliwells and the crumpled Hammonds cigarette packet illustrating a 2005 piece on the national player’s strained finances.
Continue reading “Love the legacy but it’s time for renewal”
There’s nothing like a bit of schadenfreude when matters go awry and the collapse of Cobbetts as an independent entity has proved no exception. Since it was confirmed that the firm was to become the first major UK practice to fail since the 2010 break-up of its local rival Halliwells, plenty have claimed the end was inevitable and a direct result of over-reach.
Remember convergence? In the 1990s’ tech boom the concept was all the rage. It was the simple idea that rapidly-advancing communications would see once-discrete platforms and information systems like TV, the printed word and telephones merge and dynamically share data in an economically seismic fashion.
What happened next says a lot about human nature, business and the whimsy of prediction. The internet bubble burst and such utopian visions were suddenly crazy. One received wisdom replaced another. Except convergence was one of the most accurate forecasts ever made about industry – it just took technology another three years to catch up with the hype. The fundamentals prevailed.
Continue reading “Converging in on an end game for Global London”
A few years ago – during what in retrospect turned out to be a boom – you knew where you stood with City law. The market kept growing and, while the man in the street associated lawyers with courts and disputes, those in the industry knew success came from the other side of the equation. In short, you made the real money from deal-doing and associated disciplines, not the contentious side of practice.
Continue reading “Disputes revival has huge implications for City law”
Nabarro has appointed restructuring and insolvency head Patricia Godfrey as its new head of international.
As part of the new role Godfrey will have a seat on the firm’s board and chair its international committee, which oversees the firm’s relationships with its European Alliance partners and international plans.
Currently Godfrey heads up Nabarro’s European group which manages the relationship firms within the European Alliance, including French firm August & Debouzy, GSK Stockmann + Kollegen in Germany, Nunziante Magrone in Italy and Spain’s Roca Junyent.
Continue reading “Nabarro promotes restructuring head Godfrey to international role”
Quinn Emanuel’s no-frills, high-end approach to law has re-written the rules on what US advisers can achieve in London after a startling run of growth. Legal Business asks how the iconoclastic disputes shop does it.
It’s the day after Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has moved into its new London office at Fleet Place and boxes bursting with paperwork still occupy the small reception hall. There is no fancy artwork on these walls, nor much in the way of hi-tech gadgets; everything is basic, minimal, functional. On entering the interview room, tap water is offered and greetings take place with London co-managing partner Richard East and former Allen & Overy (A&O) arbitration partner Stephen Jagusch – last year’s star UK signing – the latter dressed in jeans.
In this month’s Global London special we track the fortunes of the leading international advisers in the City. But are foreign players making progress?
With Barclays’ GC Mark Harding recently announcing his retirement, the search is on to replace one of the biggest jobs in City law. Legal Business assesses the much-changed role of bank legal heads in the post-Lehman world
When news broke in February that Mark Harding, general counsel (GC) for Barclays, was resigning after ten years in the top post, it sent ripples through the City profession. In replacing arguably the most high-profile GC in the country, the market is divided over whether Barclays should recruit internally or from private practice. The professional world that Harding has dominated for so long has changed almost beyond recognition. In filling those shoes, Barclays will be looking for much more than a leading corporate lawyer.
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has recruited Ali Nikpay, senior director at the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) into its antitrust and competition group in London.
Nikpay joins the US firm as a partner after nine years at the OFT and brings with him Deirdre Taylor, global OFT assistant director from the cartel and criminal enforcement division. Both will be based in London and will start on April 15.
At Gibson Dunn, Nikpay will focus on strengthening the European practice, advising clients on EU and UK cartels, mergers, monopolization cases and other regulatory investigations. He will also work closely with Gary Spratling, who is a partner based in San Francisco.
Continue reading “OFT senior director joins Gibson Dunn’s City office”
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) handed out its last penalty before being split up after fining companies in the Prudential Group (Prudential) a total of £30m.
According to the watchdog, the fine relates to Pru’s failure to inform the regulator that it was seeking to acquire AIA, the Asian subsidiary of AIG, in early 2010.
Stephenson Harwood and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer landed roles advising on the fine.
Continue reading “FSA slaps Pru with £30m fine before its split”
