Just months after the second pre-pack rescue of Ince & Co, the firm’s latest owner, Axiom Ince, is set to be wound down, with hundreds of business services staff facing unemployment as the firm’s lawyers find new homes.
News of the wind-down comes after a tumultuous period for Axiom following its acquisitions of former shipping leader Ince and insurance firm Plexus out of administration.
The latest in a series of departures from Kirkland & Ellis in London has seen partner Philipp Kurek join City boutique firm Signature Litigation after 14 years at the Chicago-bred disruptor. Kurek specialises in international arbitration and represents clients in various sectors, including technology, real estate, and private equity.
The move followed on from the news earlier this month that Kirkland debt finance partner Stefan Arnold-Soulby was leaving to be reunited with his colleague Neel Sachdev at Paul Weiss. Arnold-Soulby is known for his experience in handling complex financings and representing financial sponsors, with key clients that include Bain Capital Private Equity and Accel-KKR.
TLT, Latham & Watkins and Compass Group were among the major winners at the 2023 Legal Business Awards, which welcomed more than 800 guests to the Grosvenor House hotel on Tuesday (19 September).
Hosted by actor, writer, and producer Sally Phillips, the evening saw TLT crowned Law Firm of the Year, with judges particularly impressed by its stellar performance over the past few years, with a strong financial performance in 2021/2022 underpinned by key client wins.
Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling today (18 September) announced that their respective partnerships will start voting on their proposed merger on 28 September, with the voting window to close on 13 October and results announced soon after. For the merger to be voted through, 75% of the partnerships will have to vote in favour of the deal.
‘Over the past few months, partners and teams from both firms have been meeting and building relationships, and the excitement about the opportunities for the merged firm is palpable’, said A&O senior partner Wim Dejonghe (pictured) in a statement.
RPC has added partner James Channo to its London corporate practice to provide clients with advice on IPOs, secondary fundraisings, cross-border M&A and joint ventures. Channo joins RPC from Ince, where he headed up the corporate practice, before which he was the London managing partner and head of corporate at Locke Lord.
Examples of Channo’s prior transactional experience includes the listings of Supergroup, Adriatic Metals, SolGold, BSF Enterprise and Roquefort Theraputics, as well as advising Derriston Capital on the reverse takeover of S4 Capital.
Osborne Clarke has announced the launch of its third US office in Miami, adding to its existing offerings in San Francisco and New York. According to the firm, the opening of its Miami practice is the latest phase in its US and international arbitration strategies.
OC has appointed the former managing partner of Bird & Bird Spain and IT, data law and international dispute resolution specialist, Javier Fernández-Samaniego, from his own firm Samaniego Law as its managing partner and sole practitioner. He is well acquainted with the Florida, Latin America, and Spanish legal markets, having run Samaniego Law offices in both Madrid and Miami over the past seven years.
Quelling weeks of market speculation, former Kirkland & Ellis deal star Roger Johnson has finally landed at Paul Weiss, along with three other Kirkland partners and a partner from Linklaters.
The move sees Johnson, who was asked to leave the partnership of Kirkland in early August, reunited with debt superstar Neel Sachdev to co-lead Paul Weiss’ London office.
Amid a recent spate of senior deal lawyer appointments, McDermott has brought former Kirkland & Ellis partner Usman Khan into its transactions practice. Khan specialises in real estate finance, and has experience acting for clients including banking institutions, private equity sponsors, credit funds, and sovereign wealth funds.
Mayer Brown has also grown its London banking and finance practice, with the hire of Victoria Thompson from Morgan Lewis. Thompson focuses on domestic and cross-border secured lending and restructuring transactions and is dual-qualified in New York and England and Wales.
Just days after Scottish firms Morton Fraser and MacRoberts announced their intention to merge, Irwin Mitchell also unveiled plans to combine with Scottish firm Wright, Johnston & Mackenzie (WJM) in what appears to be the start of a Scottish consolidation movement.
While Irwin Mitchell already operates in Glasgow, focusing on banking and finance and personal injury, the merger with WJM would give it access to the corporate, private client, property, and asset management markets in Edinburgh, Dunfermline, Inverness and Dunblane.
The broader life sciences sector saw a spate of deal activity in recent weeks, with two acquisitions over the billion-dollar mark and several more in the hundreds of millions.
The highest-value transaction came on 28 August, when US-based life sciences company Danaher announced its agreement to purchase Cambridge-based protein research tools supplier Abcam in a deal valued at $5.7bn.
