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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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Davis Polk and Linklaters win landmark Lehman settlement

Linklaters

Linklaters and Davis Polk & Wardwell have won a settlement agreement in the long-running Lehman Brothers bankruptcy that ‘unlocks’ $9bn of assets and sees them returned to the bank’s customers.

Linklaters acted for administrators PwC, an instruction the firm has enjoyed since Lehman collapsed in 2008, on all English law matters.

The Magic Circle firm has fielded a large team acting for PwC, including restructuring partners David Ereira, Tony Bugg and Richard Holden in London and litigation partner James Warnot in New York.

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White & Case launches in Madrid with Latham hire

White & Case has launched its first office in Spain, recruiting Latham & Watkins’ Spanish corporate head Juan Manuel de Remedios to joint lead its new Madrid office as an executive partner.

The Spanish launch comes as the firm concentrates on strengthening its global footprint to take advantage of Spain’s strong links to Latin America.

White & Case Spanish practice head Michael Doran, who is based in London, said the Madrid launch ‘provides our clients with local knowledge coupled with access to our global network’.

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Addleshaw Goddard and Nabarro end merger talks

Addleshaw Goddard and Nabarro have confirmed that they were in merger talks at the start of the year but the former is understood to have called the talks off.

In separate statements released by both firms, Addleshaws and Nabarro said that discussions would not progress any further.

Nabarro said: ‘Nabarro and Addleshaw Goddard did hold very preliminary conversations to explore a possible merger. However, both firms agreed not to pursue discussions further.’

It is thought that Addleshaws decided that there weren’t sufficient business interests for the firm to merge with Nabarro. One former Nabarro partner said the talks were being held before Christmas, with the firms exchanging financial information, although both firms declined to comment on this point.

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Wiggin opens Brussels office in push for alternative income

Media boutique Wiggin has officially opened its doors in Brussels, as the firm’s pursuit of sustainable alternative revenue streams sets a benchmark for non-legal services for law firms.

The Brussels office, which launched in February, is key to developing a distinct arm of the firm’s business, Incopro, into Europe. Incopro was launched in March 2012 as a partnership between Wiggin’s rights protection practice (led by partner Simon Baggs) and Bret Boivin, formerly of Warner Bros and NBC Universal, to provide content protection services to media companies.

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Semple Fraser Appoints administrators

Scotland’s Semple Fraser has gone into administration, with Tom MacLennan and Kenny Craig, partners with accountants RSM Tenon, appointed joint administrators.

The move comes less than a week after the firm announced its intention to appoint administrators on 6 March. Although a raft of firms have stepped in to take over parts of Semple Fraser’s business, 62 people at the firm, including lawyers and support staff, have been made redundant.

‘It is with great regret that after having considered every possible option to secure the future of the business it was clear that administration is the only option,’ said Simon Etchells, managing partner of the firm.

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Details emerge of terms of Cobbetts’ fire sale

DWF acquired Cobbetts’ work in progress (WIP) from KPMG in February for £3.8m as details emerge of the Manchester firm’s fire sale.

KPMG was instructed on 17 January to start administration proceedings, although Cobbetts’ lender, Lloyds TSB, had engaged KPMG in September to formulate contingency plans as the firm was beginning to falter. Continued trading was dependent on the support of Lloyds TSB, which was only prepared to provide monies to pay January wages and other outgoings if Cobbetts granted security.

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BT and Carillion to expand external legal services

BT and Carillion have separately extended their legal arms recently to offer more external legal services.

BT Law launched in early March after the telecoms giant received an alternative business structure (ABS) licence from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). BT Law will provide services to customers in the motor claims market and will expand into other areas such as employment law and public liability.

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PROFILE: Tom Kilroy – Misys

The software firm’s legal head shares his unique viewpoint after a temporary stint as chief executive.

Tom Kilroy stands out in several notable regards from the ranks of prominent general counsel (GC). For one, the down-to-earth legal head of software firm Misys is one of a very select band of senior in-house counsel who have turned to social media as a means of communicating with peers.

As such, his ‘GC’s Eye View’ blog has built a considerable audience on the back of witty pieces on the realities of legal practice and the management of an in-house team, though work pressures have meant that in recent months Kilroy has turned more to commenting on the legal industry via Twitter, where he has amassed well over 2,000 followers.

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DWF makes 38 redundancies post Cobbetts pre-pack

Following its acquisition of Cobbetts, DWF has laid off 38 staff from its central services support team following a consultation which ended last Friday (22 March).

DWF initially placed 140 staff under redundancy risk but 83 have now been placed into roles and 21 are still in the selection process.

The firm said the move was ‘inevitable with an acquisition of this size and nature’ and that ‘there was an element of overlap of roles’.

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Top HSF litigator Greeno defects to Quinn Emanuel’s City arm

Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) partners received more bad news this morning as it emerged that top litigator Ted Greeno has resigned to join US disputes leader Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.

The departure represents arguably the most high profile contentious practitioner to join a US law firm in London directly from private practice and will be regarded as highly significant for Quinn Emanuel, which is moving to broaden the practice of its City arm.

Greeno’s resignation was announced this morning (27 March) to HSF’s partnership and comes after almost 30 years with the City firm.

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Litigation group Proven appoints David Gold to board

Litigation support business, Proven, had hired former Herbert Smith senior partner Lord David Gold as its chairman.

Gold, who currently runs litigation advisory firm David Gold & Associates, will sit on Proven’s board, which includes former BP general counsel and executive vice president Peter Bevan, and former Director of Public Prosecutions River Glaven QC.

London and New York-based Proven, part of the three-fold Good Governance Group, supports litigation and dispute resolution teams involved in high value multi-jurisdictional cases, as well as specialist services in e-discovery and digital forensics.

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Osborne Clarke retracts bulk of outsourced staff four years after deal

Osborne Clarke (OC) is set to withdraw the majority of its outsourced staff from provider Integreon and bring them back in-house four years after initially striking the deal.

The firm will transfer roughly 65 of the 75 support staff, who were first assigned to Integreon in 2009, back to its offices, with two jobs thought to be at risk. The original deal was intended to last for seven years.

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