Legal Business’ 14th annual Global London survey assesses the breakthrough of the City’s leading US shops in the past 12 months
Recently appointed to jointly lead his firm’s expansive City office, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher tax partner Jeffrey Trinklein recalls a visit to London in the early nineties. ‘Back then, the US offices in London were 100% American lawyers. Now it’s 10%.’
Continue reading “Global London overview: The eagle has landed”
Jaishree Kalia sizes up the clashing egos and driving ambition at Kirkland’s City arm.
Flashy cars, Dom Pérignon and top dollar are just some of the things associated with Kirkland & Ellis’ City high-flyers. The top ten global law firm has been highly successful in London since setting up shop in 1994 to service trophy client Bain Capital. The practice is certainly substantial, generating over $180m in 2015, according to one partner.
Mainstream M&A has for decades been the stronghold of the City elite… and the ground US law firms struggled to seize. As some of Wall Street’s elite ramp up City investment, is plc deal work about to fall to US invaders?
With seven days left on the clock to force through a bid for the UK’s largest pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, many in the City were surprised when Pfizer put forward a final £69bn offer on a spring Sunday evening when most shareholders were out enjoying their weekends.
Continue reading “Global London: The Barbarians storming the gate of City deal work”
Last year European partners voiced their fears over the possibility of the UK leaving the EU. Now they could be preparing for grim reality.
The issue on every European partner’s lips in London is the outcome and fallout of the UK’s Brexit referendum on 23 June. In last year’s Global London report, there was a palpable hope that Britain wouldn’t vote to leave the EU. Now European firms have to prepare themselves for that possibility.
Continue reading “Global London: European firms move into the unknown”
From court fee hikes to a mooted City law tax to legal aid cuts, the profession’s relationship with government is at a low ebb. With the Law Society’s fundraising powers under threat, is it time for a new trade union?
It was the most contentious attack on City lawyers in recent memory. A proposal by incoming justice secretary Michael Gove to tax top law firms to fund the criminal courts acted as a rallying cry to the usually placid commercial profession. But it wasn’t the Law Society, which receives £35m a year to represent the profession in England and Wales, leading the fight. Opposition was mounted by the firms themselves and a tiny body operating on nearly a hundredth of the Law Society’s budget.
As the golden generation of banking rainmakers retire, Legal Business takes a look at the core teams of the City elite and assesses the talent in the Square Mile’s top finance practices.
‘The days of lawyers being experts only in the investment grade market are a thing of the past,’ reflects Clifford Chance (CC)’s Michael Bates, and, if anyone should know, the Magic Circle firm’s veteran head of finance should. ‘Corporate treasurers are diversifying funding sources, so while you have to be steeped in investment grade knowledge you also need to have a good level of understanding in areas such as the US private placement market, European private placement and institutional lending markets, the investment grade bond world and M&A/stock market-related requirements to ensure different strands of the capital structure work in harmony.’
Continue reading “Golden goodbyes – changing faces and fortunes at the City’s top banking teams”
With cyber risk exploding and storm clouds over the economy, it’s harder than ever to balance risk with commercial realities. Legal Business’ annual risk survey asks how law firms are coping.
While no major law firm has yet fallen prey to the sort of high-profile data breach that the mobile operator Talk Talk suffered in 2015, the threat is front and centre of every risk manager’s mind. For those polled in Legal Business’ ninth annual risk management survey with broker Marsh, ‘IT security breach/data management accident or breach’ was again regarded as the most significant risk to law firms in terms of the damage it could cause and the likelihood of it occurring (see table).
Continue reading “The battle within: Risk management and professional indemnity survey 2016”
Historically confined to David vs Goliath claims, a new band of dispute funders are pushing the model into new frontiers. How far can they go?
Hedge fund methodology – the process of using hard numbers to make statistical predictions – is not part of a dispute lawyer’s traditional armoury. Yet the same kind of financial calculation used by banks and asset managers is not just creeping into the disputes market, but threatening to have a significant impact on it.
Continue reading “The bigger short – third party funding bets on new markets and models”
A dismissed also-ran, Dentons has improbably reinvented itself as a pioneer taking legal globalisation to new heights. Critics snipe but can the firm live up to the soaring rhetoric?
‘We’ve obviously grown faster than any law firm ever,’ says Dentons’ iconoclastic chair Joe Andrew as he loads up a presentation designed for potential global suitors. Sitting alongside chief executive and friend Elliott Portnoy they make a slick pair, unsurprising given that this presentation has been practised on more than 100 law firm leaders around the world. The batting average was impressive in 2015. In a breakthrough year, six law firms across the US, China, Australia, Singapore, Colombia and Mexico agreed to join Dentons in a spree without precedent in the legal industry. A law firm written off as a global player in most quarters had become on some measures the world’s largest firm. Actually, it achieved that distinction less than a month into 2015 with the headline-grabbing tie-up with 4,000-lawyer Chinese giant Dacheng. Many in the profession are quick to predict a dramatic fall for this empire but everyone is talking about a firm that two years ago didn’t get a second thought.
