Excalibur judgment leaves dispute funders with £20m bill

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In November the long-running Excalibur litigation came to a head as London’s Court of Appeal (CoA) found the third-party funders who bankrolled the case liable for the successful defendants’ £20m indemnity costs.

The dispute stems from the original litigation in 2013, a $1.6bn energy battle brought by Excalibur Ventures against Gulf Keystone Petroleum and Texas Keystone where it was alleged it was entitled to a 30% share in the rights of four oil fields in Kurdistan.

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Doubling up: Freshfields scores roles on Europe’s largest real estate transactions this year

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First-time instruction for Kirkland in €2.4bn purchase

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised on two of the largest European real estate transactions of 2016 as The Blackstone Group purchased a property portfolio from German real estate group IVG Immobilien for €3.3bn while Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC picked up warehouse company P3 Logistic Parks from TPG Real Estate for €2.4bn.

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UK projects teams earn their stripes as MoD makes key changes to army deal

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Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and CMS Cameron McKenna reprised their advisory roles as the Ministry of Defence (MoD) made a £1.1bn extension to the largest accommodation private finance initiative project it has undertaken.

In November the MoD amended its long-running Project Allenby/Connaught contract to include an army basing programme, which will provide new accommodation and improve facilities for soldiers. Negotiations have ensured the original transaction, which had a value of £8bn and was signed in 2006, will continue without disruption.

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Dentons cracks Central America as key local player Muñoz Global joins network

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Dentons has scaled up its Central American ambitions with plans to combine with regional firm Muñoz Global.

The combination, if approved by both partnerships, will give Dentons a presence in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama in early 2017. The global firm will merge with 53-lawyer Muñoz Global, a firm newly-created by Arias & Muñoz founders José Antonio Muñoz and Pedro Muñoz, who have split away from their former firm which will contrive to operate as Arias in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

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Snakes and ladders: Magic Circle tweaks lockstep but is it enough to hold off US firms?

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Madeleine Farman reports on recent remuneration changes among the City elite

With the growing threat of losing star partners to aggressively-expanding US firms, the Magic Circle’s traditional remuneration models have come increasingly under pressure. Last month Linklaters voted through changes to its remuneration model, while at press time Clifford Chance (CC) was due to complete a review of where partners should sit on its lockstep in a bid to retain key contributors and manage under-performers, 18 months after voting through the last set of changes.

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Finance view – White & Case reinvents its London banking practice with some success

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Madeleine Farman and Victoria Young assess the firm’s reboot after a tough post-2008 run

Traditionally a strong lender side practice in London built around relationships with clients like Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, White & Case’s banking team has moved on since the loss of a four-partner team to Latham & Watkins back in 2010. The exit of then co-head of banking Chris Kandel and his team was a significant hit to a practice that had been established at the peak of the 2000s credit binge as one of the City’s top leveraged shops. Continue reading “Finance view – White & Case reinvents its London banking practice with some success”

Can Shearman finally get ahead of the curve after 15 years of diminishing returns?

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Georgiana Tudor assesses the New York-headquartered firm’s sluggish development

Like all major global law firms, Shearman & Sterling has had its reverses in recent years, albeit a few more than most. The fundamental question that has dogged the firm in Wall Street, London and Germany, is whether this proud US outfit is prepared to move quickly and decisively enough to convincingly get past those setbacks.

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News in brief – December 2016

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PARTNERSHIPS AT RISK IN AUTUMN STATEMENT

Chancellor Philip Hammond signalled a change to partnership taxation in November’s Autumn Statement, which is expected to impact law firm pay. Hammond said he will shake up profit-sharing arrangements, and according to UHY Hacker Young tax partner Roy Maugham, the government will propose that partnerships must decide their profit-sharing arrangements at the beginning of the tax year rather than at the end, regardless of how individuals perform.

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