Gold Standard

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Mishcon de Reya was a standout performer in the 2011 LB100, jumping 11 places on the back of a 37% leap in turnover. LB charts the firm’s recent success and asks senior management where it is heading.

Kevin Gold, Mishcon de Reya’s managing partner, leads the way to a meeting room clutching a walking stick, the result of a motorcycle accident in June 2008. He broke his leg and encountered a number of complications while recovering, including contracting MRSA in hospital. For almost two years, as he underwent 19 operations restoring him to mobility and health, Gold was not always around. But such was the strength of the firm he had shaped over the preceding ten years that Mishcons went from strength to strength during that time becoming, as Gold puts it, ‘pretty unique’.

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Taking over

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Corporate trends were the talk of the hour at the third annual LB round table discussion in conjunction with McCann FitzGerald. But what does 2012 have in store for the corporate lawyer?

Creativity levels among global corporate lawyers appear to be at an all time high. With the eurozone crisis looming over the global M&A market, the new Takeover Code and the huge swathes of restructuring and refinancing work still to come through to the marketplace, never before have corporate lawyers had to think so differently.

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Corporate review – Welcome back to the new normal

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The overall success of M&A in 2012 hinges on the eurozone but there is much to be positive about, you just have to be prepared for a scrap

Confidence is a funny thing. During the first eight working days of this year, there was a sense that 2012 was going to be different. Deals had to be done, investors had to get their hands out of their pockets. Renewed optimism or even hope seemed to be a welcome antidote to the relentless doom and gloom that dominated the media for much of 2011. But then on Friday the 13th of January, talks collapsed over the restructuring of the Greek government’s debt and the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the debt of nine eurozone countries, including France. The new-year optimism vanished overnight.

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Renaissance Man

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Mark Dembovsky joined Howard Kennedy as chief executive in January 2011, charged with turning around the fortunes of a West End firm widely considered to be on shaky ground. A year on, LB assesses his progress.

Sitting in on one of the newly established management meetings in Howard Kennedy’s West End offices, it is initially hard to work out exactly who is in charge. Head of corporate Michael Harris, property finance chief Jason Lewis, and dispute resolution head Craig Emden all chip in to answer questions about the firm and its new strategy, while one member of the group sits watching quietly. Suddenly one of the partners falters, unsure of how to answer a question about what the firm’s new ‘Aiming for Excellence’ scheme entails, and the quiet man springs into action.

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Dual Core

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With the number of large-scale tech M&A deals increasing in 2011, some believe that another technology bubble is forming. Following the coalition government’s pledge to help the developing local tech sector at Silicon Roundabout, LB finds out how law firms are placing their bets, and who is getting ahead of the game.

All eyes in the legal community are firmly fixed on East London. Taylor Wessing’s October move to open a second London office in Tech City, located near the Old Street roundabout, renews focus by commercial law firms on the technology scene, and signals a flourishing of the UK’s tech sector.

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Suspicious minds

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Third-party litigation funding has yet to really take off, despite being around for five years. While a mature market is still some way away, litigation specialists are finally seeing that self-funding is not the only way forward.

Big-ticket disputes in the public sphere and funded by a third party are rare. The biggest case in the UK to date came in 2008 and featured an £89m negligence claim brought by Stone & Rolls against audit firm Moore Stephens. The dispute was driven by Norton Rose’s Sam Eastwood for client Stone & Rolls and was funded by IM Litigation Funding. The case was thrown out by the House of Lords as part of its grand finale in 2009, gifting a massive victory to Barlow Lyde & Gilbert client Moore Stephens.

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Eurozone debt: Keeping it together

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As the sovereign debt crisis threatens to bring the euro to its knees, a group of lawyers has been working behind the scenes to keep the cogs turning. LB finds out what happened backstage.

Lee Buchheit has faced a frantic few months. He has been advising the Greek government on how to sort out its massive debt problem. This has seen him shuttle between meetings across Europe for the past five months and spend more time in hotel rooms in Paris, Brussels, Berlin and London than in his hometown of New York.

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Red Tape – Banking and finance

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As the regulators come down harder on banks and financial institutions, and Basel III, the Vickers reforms and Dodd-Frank are set to transform the banking and finance sector, which law firms are reaping the benefits?

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) raised £91.2m in fines from UK financial institutions during 2010/11. This marks a staggering increase from 2009/10 when it collected £33.5m. Since the start of 2011 it has fined individuals and institutions £38.4m. It also signals a backing up of the watchdog’s promise to flex its muscles, taking a more prominent position when it comes to enforcement, hoping to strike fear in the UK’s financial services community.

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LA Lawyer

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Father of five, two-time Hawaiian Iron Man competitor, climber, trial lawyer extraordinaire and co-founder of what can legitimately claim to be the leading global litigation-only firm. John Quinn has earned the right to put his feet up. Not a chance he says.

On a hiking trip to Wyoming a few years ago, a group of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan litigators, headed up by founder John Quinn, arrived at a freezing 9,000 ft lake. Quinn joked that the first summer associate to swim the lake would get a job offer at his firm. Turning his back on the group for a moment, he heard a splash as one of the keen students dived headlong into the water. True to his word, an offer was made.

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Taking off

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As the airline industry continues to face a tough economic climate, falling passenger numbers and strict regulations, litigation levels have risen. But who’s getting the work?

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou could shake things up in the airline sector yet again. The 46-year-old founder of easyJet grabbed the world’s interest in September with rumours that he’s on the verge of launching a new long-haul budget airline likely to be called Fastjet.

But Sir Stelios has drawn more headlines of late for his legal disputes. In particular, a lengthy legal showdown with easyJet, which he founded in 1995 and in which his family still owns a 37.4% stake. It’s a dispute that has also seen him at odds with his former solicitors, Bird & Bird.

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