Hogan Lovells has expanded its Latin America offering by launching a second office in Brazil, hiring former Clifford Chance (CC) partner Isabel Costa Carvalho.
Its new São Paulo office will operate as a foreign legal consultancy, offering services to local and international companies and banks after the Brazilian Bar Association awarded the global law firm a licence to practise in the region in July 2013.
New Year surge in high-value deals after subdued year
While deal activity was down again in 2013, last year’s growth in confidence in the corporate sector, together with fundraising activity among a number of large private equity houses, has seen some of the UK’s elite firms advise on high-value deals announced in January, including Amec’s $3.2bn acquisition of Swiss rival Foster Wheeler.
The Linklaters team advising Amec was led by corporate finance partner Shane Griffin, alongside fellow corporate partner Aedamar Comiskey. Scott Sonnenblick and Tom Shropshire are advising on US law aspects of the deal from New York and London respectively, while John Tucker and Simon Pritchard are leading on finance and antitrust issues.
Continue reading “UK elite firms defy the transactional gloom of 2013”
Year-long study by legal technology body identifies future challenges
Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics will play a game-changing role within the legal sector as law firms emerge from a decade where they began to understand the power of technology, and to recognise they now have to put it at the heart of their business.
These are key findings of the Legal Technology Future Horizons study, a report into how global advances in technology could impact the legal industry over the next decade. Commissioned by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), the report is based on research conducted between January and November 2013 and was released last month.
Increasing confidence in the transactional market has contributed to a rash of senior partner moves at the start of 2014, with the UK’s leading firms bolstering both their London and international practices.
In the City, upwardly mobile US practices continued to boost their capability with Weil, Gotshal & Manges hiring Hogan Lovells banking and finance partner Chris McLaughlin, who has extensive experience of cross-border private equity buyouts and European real estate acquisitions and restructuring. His hire came a week after Latham & Watkins hired Weil Gotshal funds partner Nick Benson, its fifth City hire within the past 12 months.
BLP bank debt up sharply as 2012/13 annual reports filter through
Growing debt was a recurring theme in the limited liability partnership (LLP) accounts filed in January, led by Legal Business 100 top-20 UK firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, which, after a year of partner departures and a significant drop in profit per equity partner, revealed a 223.7% increase in bank borrowing in the 2012/13 financial year.
The 790-lawyer firm’s borrowing ballooned to £45m from £13.9m in the previous year, on the back of new bank loans totalling £31.1m.
Continue reading “Latest LLP filings show increased borrowing”
SRA aims to bring maximum fines for law firms closer to the much higher figures for ABSs
Further tensions in the Law Society’s already strained relationship with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) emerged in January as the representative body prepares to contest its regulatory arm’s attempt to increase its fining powers over law firms.
In a consultation that ends this month, the SRA has invited views on its proposal to increase the current level of fining powers over City and regional firms to as much as £100,000. However, the Law Society said it has ‘concerns over the functioning of the enforcement team within the SRA’.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) last month confirmed the names of the 136 firms which have been forced to close since 29 December, having not secured professional indemnity insurance (PII).
The list of firms, which the SRA said it published in the interests of protecting consumers and third parties, includes Alastair J Brett, the London-based firm set up by the former legal director of The Times newspaper, who was recently suspended over the Nightjack case.
Continue reading “High Street gloom as SRA publishes full list of uninsured firms forced to close”
Bujalski promoted to head of legal as Handford joins Couchmans
The Rugby Football Union (RFU) has reconfigured its in-house legal team, promoting in-house lawyer Angus Bujalski (pictured) to head of legal following the recent departure of Polly Handford to become a partner at sports law firm Couchmans.
Former Slaughter and May lawyer Bujalski will report directly to the organisation’s legal and governance director, Karena Vleck. While Vleck has oversight of legal as well as other sports-related areas such as player discipline, Bujalski will have specific responsibility for the legal function. Continue reading “RFU rejigs legal team as deputy head joins sports firm”
It’s been an amazing career. I’ve been with Clifford Chance (CC) for 40 years. People had just stopped wearing bowler hats when I started, I was relieved to notice. What I remember was being in Royex House at Coward Chance. No air conditioning – we used to bake in the summer. People used to go out for lunches and have a bottle of wine a head and work in the afternoons.
I remember watching then senior partners walking in at ten in the morning. They’d go for a long lunch with clients and go home at three. I thought one day that might be my life. Of course, it never has been my life. The City has changed completely.
As latest payout confirmed to Lehman’s creditors, total US and UK costs soar to $2bn
Clifford Chance is among the creditors of the European operations of Lehman Brothers set to receive a windfall after administrator PwC announced a total payout of $7.8bn, the latest in a series of payments made to creditors of the former US investment bank as it nears the end of its mammoth winding-up process.
According to one partner at the Magic Circle firm, the payment could be as much as £10m and a spokesperson for PwC said creditors are likely to receive payment before the end of the calendar year.
Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2008, listing $639bn of assets against $613bn of outstanding debt but within days creditors filed claims of $1.2trn, double its assets.
