‘Private capital is a super creative industry’ – KKR Europe GC Susanna Berger

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‘Private capital is a super creative industry’ – KKR Europe GC Susanna Berger

Susanna Berger – Managing director, general counsel for Europe, KKR & Co Year of qualification: 2002 University of Chicago Law School, 1997-98 Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, 2000-06 Avenue Capital Management, 2006-08 Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, 2008 KKR & Co, 2009-present I joined KKR 15 years ago. At that point the team consisted of about 40 …

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‘I liken myself to an octopus with many tentacles in different places’ – Apollo’s Seda Yalçinkaya

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‘I liken myself to an octopus with many tentacles in different places’ – Apollo’s Seda Yalçinkaya

Seda Yalçinkaya – Partner and GC – International, Apollo Global Management Year of qualification: 2009 Columbia Law School, 1995-98 Cravath, Swaine & Moore, 1998-2005 Citi, 2005-11 Silver Lake, 2011-19 Apollo Global Management, 2019-present I started my career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. It was a deliberate choice – I had thought I’d …

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‘My time on non-legal is the same as my time on legal’ – Bridgepoint GC Rachel Thompson

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‘My time on non-legal is the same as my time on legal’ – Bridgepoint GC Rachel Thompson

Rachel Thompson – Partner and group general counsel, Bridgepoint Year of qualification: 2007 Clifford Chance, 2005-09 Bridgepoint, 2010-present It was never really a conscious decision to go in-house; I came on secondment from Clifford Chance two years after qualification, when Bridgepoint had just hired [former Travers Smith private equity head] Charlie Barter as its first …

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Brodies’ Nick Scott on family commitments, returning to university, and building Scotland’s first £100m firm

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Brodies’ Nick Scott on family commitments, returning to university, and building Scotland’s first £100m firm

I’m the only one in my immediate family who isn’t a scientist – they’re all biologists and engineers. My grandfather, though, was a lawyer in a small market town in Fife so I’d always been interested in law as a career. He was a traditional high street lawyer – doing very little corporate work – …

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Market forces: Paul Weiss, Kirkland and the war for London talent

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Market forces: Paul Weiss, Kirkland and the war for London talent

In the contest for the biggest legal story of the moment, the A&O Shearman merger may be more transformational for the firms involved, but it is fair to say it has not quite captured the imagination like Paul Weiss’s dramatic and audacious hiring spree in London. ‘The question is whether a firm can genuinely build …

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Life Sciences Yearbook 2024 – Editor’s letter

Posted on | Life Sciences Yearbook 2024 |
Life Sciences Yearbook 2024 – Editor’s letter

Welcome to the 2024 Life Sciences Yearbook from the Legal 500 and Legal Business, sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills. This yearly publication will offer insight into the issues facing life sciences companies in the wake of Brexit, as well as interviews with leading private practice lawyers in the sector and a data-driven snapshot of the …

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M&A veterans: Got the T-shirt – M&A Hall of Famers on closing deals in a crisis

Posted on | Analysis Deals Yearbook 2023 |
M&A veterans: Got the T-shirt – M&A Hall of Famers on closing deals in a crisis

A global pandemic, the war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices and inflation, as well as interest rate hikes significantly pushing up the cost of debt – it is no wonder M&A markets are struggling right now. Against this backdrop of instability, arguably the bigger questions are how activity levels managed to hold up for as …

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Dealmakers – the veterans edit

Posted on | Analysis Deals Yearbook 2023 |
Dealmakers – the veterans edit

Karen Davies – Ashurst London corporate partner and global chair Why did you decide to become an M&A lawyer? It was law or medicine, and halfway through my science A-Levels I realised that reasoning and debate was where my passion lay. I’ve never regretted it. I was initially drawn to M&A by the buzz of …

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