Comment: Law firms will never just hand status to City women – they’ll have to take it

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Comment: Law firms will never just hand status to City women – they’ll have to take it

In a blow for traditionalists, our latest cover feature eschews profiling a group of hard-working, smart, highly-confident men who are talented lawyers to instead profile a group of hard-working, smart, variably-confident women who are talented lawyers. Radical stuff.

But then the career cycle for too many ambitious female deal lawyers remains nasty, brutish and short. While women increasingly advance into senior roles in advisory practice areas and even more so among the ranks of senior general counsel, in the upper reaches of transactional law, it is still a boys’ club and anyone claiming differently does not know many corporate lawyers. Continue reading “Comment: Law firms will never just hand status to City women – they’ll have to take it”

Alphas – the hunt for female deal stars (and why it’s hard to be a City woman)

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Alphas – the hunt for female deal stars (and why it’s hard to be a City woman)

‘You will have to go out and find the women – they won’t come to you,’ warns Travers Smith partner Lucie Cawood when Legal Business began researching this cover feature. That proved an astute prediction.

Searching for senior female talent in the City, amid weeks spent amassing nearly 60 interviews with partners, law firm leaders, corporate heads and recruiters, it becomes clear that it takes more work to get women deal lawyers talking than their male equivalents. A lot more. Continue reading “Alphas – the hunt for female deal stars (and why it’s hard to be a City woman)”

Milbank continues City hiring spree with Shearman high yield guru Gkoutzinis as Vinson nabs Jones Day finance partner

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Milbank continues City hiring spree with Shearman high yield guru Gkoutzinis as Vinson nabs Jones Day finance partner

High-yield specialist Apostolos Gkoutzinis is to join Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy from US rival Shearman & Sterling, a move which marks the firm’s fifth hire in the space of a week.

The recruitment of Gkoutzinis, Shearman’s head of European capital markets, is another sign of Milbank’s ambitions to make its mark in City finance, coming just days after it secured a four-partner restructuring team from Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft. Continue reading “Milbank continues City hiring spree with Shearman high yield guru Gkoutzinis as Vinson nabs Jones Day finance partner”

Magic Circle scrambles as UK construction giant Carillion falls into liquidation

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Magic Circle scrambles as UK construction giant Carillion falls into liquidation

A heavyweight line-up of Slaughter and May, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Dentons, Clifford Chance (CC) and Linklaters have mobilised as construction giant Carillion files for liquidation in one of the largest UK insolvencies for years.

Dentons’ restructuring partners Nigel Barnett and Neil Griffiths are advising the liquidator, the Official Receiver, which the government will be providing with funding required to continue to carry out the company’s public services. Continue reading “Magic Circle scrambles as UK construction giant Carillion falls into liquidation”

Laying the foundations – lawyers scramble as demand for African infra booms

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Laying the foundations – lawyers scramble as demand for African infra booms

As the world’s largest continent, Africa covers 20% of global land area and 16% of the global population – currently 1.27 billion people, according to the latest United Nations estimates. By 2050, the addition of a further 1.3 billion Africans will be greater than the population growth in the rest of the world combined, pushing the continent’s total numbers above 2.6 billion citizens. In what is termed the biggest human transformation of our age, that figure is projected to reach four billion by the end of the century.

Accordingly, the infrastructure challenge is immense and some law firms are more alert than others to the long-term growth opportunities. Those with a short-term perspective see only problems: weak commodity prices, underdeveloped legal systems, corruption, currency issues and unstable or unreliable political regimes. They also focus on Africa’s still-modest aggregate GDP of $2.19trn (2016) – less than France – and compared with $1.6trn (2010), a slight decline in percentage terms over six years from 3% to 2.9% of the global total. Continue reading “Laying the foundations – lawyers scramble as demand for African infra booms”

Deal watch: Linklaters and White & Case in landmark Africa project as Slaughters and Macfarlanes lead on Cineworld takeover

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UK-based deal specialists were busy this week advising on cross-border transactions spanning three continents.

Linklaters and White & Case have deployed their global teams to act on a $2.73bn refinancing for an infrastructure project across two countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Continue reading “Deal watch: Linklaters and White & Case in landmark Africa project as Slaughters and Macfarlanes lead on Cineworld takeover”

Deutsche Bank names former Links veteran as new global law chief

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Deutsche Bank names former Links veteran as new global law chief

Deutsche Bank has appointed a new legal head, handing its chief compliance officer and head of global governance Florian Drinhausen one of the most powerful general counsel roles in the cross-border legal market.

The internal appointment comes after it was announced that co-general counsel (GC) Christof von Dryander and Simon Dodds are to leave the bank respectively at the end of 2017 and 31 March 2018. Continue reading “Deutsche Bank names former Links veteran as new global law chief”

Ashurst pulls the plug on ill-fated 2009 move into US finance law with NY restructuring

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Ashurst pulls the plug on ill-fated 2009 move into US finance law with NY restructuring

Five New York-based partners left Ashurst in July for US finance firm Chapman and Cutler, with a sixth partner departing for Allen & Overy (A&O) last month.

Partners Patrick Quill, David Nirenberg, Steven Kopp, Doug Bird and Tom Glushko all left Ashurst, completing the full departure of the ten-partner team the firm hired from McKee Nelson in 2009 to launch a structured finance practice.

Continue reading “Ashurst pulls the plug on ill-fated 2009 move into US finance law with NY restructuring”

‘Should be the end of the proposal’: Queen’s Speech reprieve for SFO as abolition move recedes

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‘Should be the end of the proposal’: Queen’s Speech reprieve for SFO as abolition move recedes

Theresa May’s Conservative manifesto pledge to subsume the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into the National Crime Agency (NCA) was absent from June’s Queen’s Speech, with lawyers welcoming the prospect of the merger being shelved.

The speech, outlining the next two years’ statutory agenda, instead introduced a UK repeal and a customs bill and related European legislation to replace the EU’s customs regime, the world’s largest by economic output.

Continue reading “‘Should be the end of the proposal’: Queen’s Speech reprieve for SFO as abolition move recedes”

Client profile: David Fein, Standard Chartered Bank

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Client profile: David Fein, Standard Chartered Bank

The former law firm partner turned banking giant GC on his globally-demanding role

As a former senior staffer in the Clinton administration, David Fein has a tendency to chart his career and life against the backdrop of US politics. While working as a state district attorney, it was early in Barack Obama’s second presidential term that Fein found himself getting wistful for a new challenge, one that would see him become general counsel (GC) of the FTSE 100 banking group Standard Chartered in his first move in-house. ‘I was ready for a new challenge. I wanted something new and so I thought something I hadn’t done was be a general counsel.’

Continue reading “Client profile: David Fein, Standard Chartered Bank”