Offshore but not off limits

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Offshore but not off limits

Navigant’s David Lawler on recent developments in asset-tracing claims

Given the multiplicity of channels available to money launderers and the increasingly sophisticated methods they use to cover their tracks when routing dirty money, claimants in asset-tracing cases face many barriers to recovering funds. Indeed, electronic banking means that funds transfers across borders and through multiple accounts allow fraudsters to quickly and repeatedly splinter assets into sub-accounts, almost instantaneously. They have many ways to hide money, involving webs of credits and debits between banks and intermediaries.

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Insolvency and Restructuring: Responsive approach to clients needs

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Insolvency and Restructuring: Responsive approach to clients needs

Restructuring and insolvency situations call for practitioners who combine thorough legal expertise with in-depth knowledge of the market and a strong focus on the clients’ needs.

Prager Dreifuss is one of the leading Swiss law firms for insolvency and restructuring, including over 40 lawyers and a total of around 80 employees at our offices in Zürich, Bern and Brussels.

With specialised experience ranging from M&A and banking and finance to dispute resolution, insurance law, private clients and tax, the firm is ideally placed to offer our clients a full and well-rounded service.

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Harnessing business talent for global growth

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Totum’s Deborah Gray on achieving a global presence.

The vision of a truly global legal business offering a seamless service to multinational clients is an alluring one for law firm leaders. But achieving a global presence and making it work in practice is a challenge. According to PwC’s annual survey 2015, the UK continues to subsidise international offices with UK profit per partners far outweighing those in international offices. Continue reading “Harnessing business talent for global growth”

The future for Scottish firms

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Brodies’ Bill Drummond on the way ahead for the firm

At this time of year, along with most managing partners, my focus is on financial matters. Our results are pleasing of course, reflecting the hard work of my partners and other colleagues, and the support of our expanding list of clients. However, profitability only tells part of the story and, as far as Brodies is concerned, is simply surface evidence of that hard work for clients.

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IP UK

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Brexit and the outlook for sports law

Sport is a multibillion-dollar global industry on a permanent growth trend. Football, that opiate of the masses, is the fastest growing sector of all. The European football market, says Deloitte, will exceed €25bn by 2017. While we may gasp at FC Barcelona’s record-breaking £120m-a-year deal with Nike, and at the fact that Sky and BT paid £5.1bn for three seasons’ worth of TV rights for the beautiful game, we know next year there will be another, bigger deal and more companies vying for opportunities to promote themselves across the world. For every sport there is a new record to be broken both on and off the field.

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The importance of getting early advice

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Kate McMahon of Edmonds, Marshall, McMahon on EMM’s unique offering to victims.

Edmonds, Marshall, McMahon (EMM) was set up in 2012 as a boutique firm specialising solely in private prosecutions, the first and only specialist private prosecution firm in the country. The three founding partners are all experienced prosecutors, with Tamlyn Edmonds previously heading up the prosecution team for the Department of Health, Kate McMahon prosecuting for the bribery and corruption team at the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), and Andrew Marshall being a Grade 4 Advocate for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Standing Counsel for the Attorney General’s list of prosecuting counsel.

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Banking on change: bonuses still centre stage

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Tapestry’s Janet Cooper on regulatory developments affecting pay in financial services.

Since 2009, regulators around the world have been issuing regulations and guidance on how and what employees in financial services firms should be paid. For lawyers working in the area, staying on top of the changes is challenging; making sense of them and applying them in a global context is complex.

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Spain: A changing legal landscape

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Garrigues’ Fernando Vives on the after-effects of the crisis.

Let’s take, as a starting premise, that the Spanish economy’s situation remains challenging: despite the European Commission forecasts, a shining 2.6% and 2.7% GDP growth in 2016 and 2017, Spain has yet to deal with an unemployment rate of around 20%. Clearly, we still have room to improve.

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Sophisticated spending – Managing the costs of high-stakes litigation

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Foreword

The rate of change affecting litigation costs is alarming when the rumours and policy proposals are conflated with the concrete developments. If Sir Rupert Jackson had his way, the burden of court-mandated budgeting in cases up to £10m, itself relatively new, would soon be alleviated at the lower end by fixed costs. That lower end could be in cases worth up to £250,000 – which to the wider world is not low at all.

Meanwhile, budgeting is said to be clogging up the court lists; hence only skeletal budget submissions are now needed for cases worth up to £50,000. There is an updated court form for compiling and presenting budgets but it remains user-hostile. The design of this ‘Precedent H’ continues to veer towards data obfuscation and is not easy on the eye. Continue reading “Sophisticated spending – Managing the costs of high-stakes litigation”

Middle Eastern resilience

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JLegal’s Richard McLerie discusses the region’s legal market.

Over the past 12 months, the region has endured a period punctuated by numerous challenges, principle among which is arguably the depression in oil prices and the ongoing danger posed by militant groups destabilising significant areas of the region. The wider ramifications of these factors cannot be covered exhaustively here. However, of notable importance in the context of the legal market is how some of the more stable jurisdictions, notably that of the UAE, which continues to stand out as the hub from which firms operate their regional offering, have benefited from the migration of wealth into the more stable, internationally-underpinned markets from wider areas of the Middle East deemed, at least for the time being, unacceptably risky locations in which to invest.

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