LB100 LAW FIRMS The firms that appear in the Legal Business 100 (LB100) are the top 100 firms in the UK, ranked by gross fee income generated over the financial year 2014/15 – usually 1 May 2014 to 30 April 2015. We call these the 2015 results. Where firms have identical fee incomes, the firms …
PEARSON TURNS TO FRESHFIELDS ON SUMMER FT AND ECONOMIST SELL-OFF Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer advised Pearson twice over the summer. The publisher sold the Financial Times to Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom client Nikkei and split its 50% stake in The Economist Group between Macfarlanes client and co-shareholder Exor, while Linklaters acted for The Economist. …
Continue reading “Deal watch: Corporate activity in July and August 2015”
As European agencies turn up the heat on bribery and corruption, we team up with Simmons & Simmons to assess how clients are responding. Until 1999 German laws allowed for some bribes to be tax deductible. Bribes or grease payments enabled German companies to get ahead overseas, or so many claimed. These payments were viewed …
Continue reading “Hard graft – The pan-Europe bribery crackdown”
From a successful UK focus to consolidation, LB100 management figures give their reflections on the market So far so good ‘A number of businesses like us have adopted a strong sector proposition in the UK and that has been welcomed by the market. It reflects a general improvement in the UK economy and those businesses …
It was another strong performance from Legal Business’ 2015 Law Firm of the Year, Osborne Clarke (OC), which saw revenues grow from £142m to £151m, with profits per equity partner up from £513,000 to £550,000. ‘We had a fantastic year the year before and just to keep that momentum going was key for us,’ says …
‘We have worked very hard since the outset to demonstrate that we are not simply a private client firm,’ says James Carter, managing partner of Charles Russell Speechlys (CRS). His comments come nine months after the union of Charles Russell and Speechly Bircham, creating a 530-lawyer practice that moves into the UK top 30 with …
The forced obsolescence of Macfarlanes and Travers Smith as City-focused M&A teams has been as long predicted as it has failed to materialise. Since 2010, after both firms quickly recovered from a brutal post-Lehman shock, the pair have proved not just resilient but able to thrive. The pair performed robustly again in 2014/15, with Macfarlanes …
Amid a challenging year for London’s top firms, Allen & Overy (A&O) managed to hit its stride with revenue growth of 4% to £1.28bn, while profits per equity partner (PEP) came in at £1.21m, a rise of 8%. The result was significantly ahead of A&O’s London peers, which have also seen their sterling results impacted …
Life for a financial services-heavy law firm competing with larger rivals was always going to be challenging after the banking crisis, but Simmons & Simmons suffered more than most as it wrestled with abortive merger talks, plunging turnover and strategic discord. This makes its revival in the last two years all the more welcome. Following …
Carter Perry Bailey’s Mark Aizlewood and Simon Thomas highlight the threat to law firms. At the time of writing, news arrived that car owners in the US have filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Fiat Chrysler and a dashboard computer manufacturer after hackers used a laptop computer to take control of a Jeep being driven …
