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Redundancies: Pinsent Masons to lose 13 fee-earners in employment reshuffle

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.

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Dundas & Wilson woes continue as it loses private equity duo to Mishcons

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).

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Stewart steps out of Goldstein shadow as Olswang hands popular head another term

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.

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Global London top 50

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…

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Positional play

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.

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Love the legacy but it’s time for renewal

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.

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Cobbetts gets burned but that’s business

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.

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Converging in on an end game for Global London

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.

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Disputes revival has huge implications for City law

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.

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Nabarro promotes restructuring head Godfrey to international role

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.

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Revolution on a shoe string

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.

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With the territory

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.

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OFT senior director joins Gibson Dunn’s City office

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.

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FSA slaps Pru with £30m fine before its split

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.

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CoA makes up three women in recent justice appointments

Three female judges have been appointed to the Court of Appeal (CoA) in the latest round of promotions, which has seen 10 new justices appointed.

The promotions, as made by the Queen, include Mrs Justice Gloster, Macur and Sharp, and take the total number of CoA judges to seven from four.

Gloster J was appointed to the High Court in 2004, while Sharp J spent just four years on the High Court bench before her promotion to the CoA. Macur J joins from the Midland Circuit, where she was the presiding judge.

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End games

The 11th annual Legal Business Global London survey shows that US firms in the City are playing to win. UK rivals should watch every move.

Lock up your associates. Chain down your partners. The Americans still want to take your lawyers (and lunch). This year’s Global London survey emphatically confirms that leading US law firms are firmly back in growth mode in the City. Fifteen firms have seen headcount rise by more than 10% compared to 2011, while overall headcount across the 50 firms is up 2.6% on last year to 4,382.

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Barclays law chief gets £3.7m share award

If there was any remaining doubt that the lot of the modern general counsel at a major bluechip is a challenging but increasingly well rewarded role, news last month of a controversial bonus round at Barclays should put that to rest.

The bank announced on 20 March that it was awarding nine executives a total of £40.2m in shares, with outgoing group general counsel Mark Harding receiving shares worth over £3.7m.

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US firms on the march as Global London headcount rises

Foreign firms in London made bulking up their senior ranks their key priority in 2012, with average partner headcount hitting an all time high, according to the 11th annual Legal Business Global London survey.

The overall number of partners at Global London firms climbed from 1,296 in 2011 to 1,325, proving that the Capital is still one of the most vital legal markets in the world. The top 50 foreign firms in London by headcount added an extra 29 partners to their respective firms compared to last year, with lateral hiring as the main reason for growth.

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Falling QC appointments reflect fears for criminal Bar’s prospects

QC appointments have declined for the fourth year running with the number of applicants also on a downward path.

In this year’s annual silk round, announced on 27 February, just 84 QCs were appointed from a total of 183 applicants. This was down from 88 awards in 2012 and 120 in 2011 from 214 and 251 applications respectively.

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