Taylor Wessing (TW) bolstered its strong IP credentials last month, recruiting the head of Harbottle & Lewis’ IP group Mark Owen into its City TMT team.
The arrival of Owen will add further strength to TW’s leading soft IP practice. The former Clifford Chance lawyer has advised significant media and entertainment clients on copyright, designs, trade mark, database rights and data privacy issues for the last 25 years.
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CMS Cameron McKenna (CMS) and Osborne Clarke (OC) have scaled back their legal process outsourcing (LPO) agreements with Integreon within days of each other. CMS is seeking an alternative provider while OC is looking to bring resources back in house.
The ten-year deal between CMS and Integreon, struck in May 2010, was the largest of its kind, worth £600m. CMS had hoped it would establish a revolutionary alternative model for legal support services by outsourcing its entire support staff function in areas including finance, human resources, and IT. The deal resulted in an estimated 9% of its support staff being made redundant, while a further 21% were relocated to either Bristol or India.
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Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) is to end its five-year exclusive tie-up with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ghazzawi Professional Association (GPA), as international activity in the region shows no sign of slowing down.
The two firms’ association formally ends on 1 August, but HSF will continue to co-operate with GPA on a non-exclusive basis. Neither firm has plans to enter into another exclusive association at this time.
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Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) opened in Seoul last month, becoming the third UK firm to open in Korea, after Clifford Chance and DLA Piper.
The office will be co-headed by London disputes partner Tony Dymond and Singapore corporate partner Lewis McDonald, both of whom are relocating to the region.
The Seoul office will primarily focus on outbound work. It opens with two partners, three associates and a paralegal.
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The trend of mid-market consolidation continues apace, with two major non-City players, Mills & Reeve and Thomas Eggar, announcing separate deals to strengthen their national coverage last month.
With the merger of Bond Pearce and Dickinson Dees going live on 1 May and Withers and Speechly Bircham confirming merger talks in March, partners at Mills & Reeve were due to vote at press time on a potential tie-up with Manchester-based George Davies. This news came just days after Thomas Eggar announced its own merger with City firm Pritchard Englefield.
DWF acquired Cobbetts’ work in progress (WIP) from KPMG in February for £3.8m as details emerge of the Manchester firm’s fire sale.
KPMG was instructed on 17 January to start administration proceedings, although Cobbetts’ lender, Lloyds TSB, had engaged KPMG in September to formulate contingency plans as the firm was beginning to falter. Continued trading was dependent on the support of Lloyds TSB, which was only prepared to provide monies to pay January wages and other outgoings if Cobbetts granted security.
Continue reading “Details emerge of terms of Cobbetts’ fire sale”
Scotland’s Semple Fraser has gone into administration, with Tom MacLennan and Kenny Craig, partners with accountants RSM Tenon, appointed joint administrators.
The move comes less than a week after the firm announced its intention to appoint administrators on 6 March. Although a raft of firms have stepped in to take over parts of Semple Fraser’s business, 62 people at the firm, including lawyers and support staff, have been made redundant.
‘It is with great regret that after having considered every possible option to secure the future of the business it was clear that administration is the only option,’ said Simon Etchells, managing partner of the firm.
Media boutique Wiggin has officially opened its doors in Brussels, as the firm’s pursuit of sustainable alternative revenue streams sets a benchmark for non-legal services for law firms.
The Brussels office, which launched in February, is key to developing a distinct arm of the firm’s business, Incopro, into Europe. Incopro was launched in March 2012 as a partnership between Wiggin’s rights protection practice (led by partner Simon Baggs) and Bret Boivin, formerly of Warner Bros and NBC Universal, to provide content protection services to media companies.
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Addleshaw Goddard and Nabarro have confirmed that they were in merger talks at the start of the year but the former is understood to have called the talks off.
In separate statements released by both firms, Addleshaws and Nabarro said that discussions would not progress any further.
Nabarro said: ‘Nabarro and Addleshaw Goddard did hold very preliminary conversations to explore a possible merger. However, both firms agreed not to pursue discussions further.’
It is thought that Addleshaws decided that there weren’t sufficient business interests for the firm to merge with Nabarro. One former Nabarro partner said the talks were being held before Christmas, with the firms exchanging financial information, although both firms declined to comment on this point.
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White & Case has launched its first office in Spain, recruiting Latham & Watkins’ Spanish corporate head Juan Manuel de Remedios to joint lead its new Madrid office as an executive partner.
The Spanish launch comes as the firm concentrates on strengthening its global footprint to take advantage of Spain’s strong links to Latin America.
White & Case Spanish practice head Michael Doran, who is based in London, said the Madrid launch ‘provides our clients with local knowledge coupled with access to our global network’.
Continue reading “White & Case launches in Madrid with Latham hire”
