Slaughter and May corporate partners Richard de Carle and Susannah Macknay are spearheading a demerger at mining giant BHP Billiton, which is spinning off its less profitable aluminium, silver, South African coal, manganese and nickel businesses into a new company estimated to be worth around $14bn.
The legacy Squire Sanders practice in the Middle East, a team of 23 lawyers that included five partners, has exited Squire Patton Boggs following the firm’s merger, leaving it with Patton Boggs’ legacy affiliate The Khalid Al-Thebity Law Firm.
Reed Smith and Berwin Leighton Paisner have led on a £430m purchase of three UK business parks by asset management groups Oaktree Capital Management and Patrizia.
Hong Kong lawyers turned out in force last night (14 August) to cast a vote of no confidence in local law society president Ambrose Lam, following his recent support of a Beijing white paper perceived to raise issues over Hong Kong’s judicial independence.
There has been more attention of late on the corporate ambitions of major audit groups but news this week is a reminder that accountants are also targeting the high street legal services market.
More than three years after it emerged that the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler had been hacked – leading to the closure of The News of the World and the launch of the Leveson inquiry – the reverberations from the scandal continue to rumble on.
Eight months after applying for a Foreign Legal Practice licence to open in Singapore, US law firm Dechert has been given the nod to launch its fourth Asian office.
Scottish firm Harper Macleod, the legal advisor to the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, has expanded by merging with private client boutique Bird Semple to create a firm with a combined turnover of more than £23m.
Baker & McKenzie has overtaken DLA Piper as the world’s largest law firm, with revenues for the year ending 30 June 2014 climbing by 5% to $2.54 billion after a transactions bonanza.
Slaughter and May, which is well known for its high retention rates, has kept on 33 out of its 34 qualifying trainees, giving it a retention rate of 97%. In March, the firm retained 36 people from a cohort of 38, a rate of 95%.
