Victoria Young reviews the changing property finance landscape
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) head of real estate finance Naveen Vijh surveys a much changed landscape: ‘We have a much more diverse client market now. It is important to know the whole of the market, its whole breadth.’
I haven’t the faintest idea why I became a lawyer. I’d signed up to be a management consultant after university and hated it. My brother said: ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?’ I thought: ‘Oh, alright.’ Got as far as A in the directory and got work experience at Ashurst.
Continue reading “Life during law: Stephen Lloyd, Allen & Overy”
Unease over department restructuring continues
Lloyds Banking Group is pushing an incentive scheme to its lawyers to secure new recruits into senior legal roles following a string of exits. The move comes after the bank made multiple redundancies as part of an ongoing restructure.
Continue reading “Lloyds offers bonus for help filling senior legal roles amid shake-up”
Eversheds, Hogan Lovells and Baker & McKenzie are among nine firms to have won places on French multinational aerospace, defence and security firm Safran’s inaugural global legal panel.
Weil, Gotshal & Manges, as well as Fieldfisher and Osborne Clarke (OC) have also made the roster, alongside domestic French boutiques Betto Seraglini, Brunswick Société d’Avocats and Courrégé Foreman.
External legal spend hits £330k on dropped inquiry
Having closed its investigation earlier this year due to ‘lack of evidence’, it has emerged that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) spent £2.1m investigating alleged rigging of the foreign exchange (forex) market in less than two years.
Continue reading “Revealed: SFO records £2.1m spend on Forex investigation”
A High Court judge has ruled Dechert was wrong on the law relating to legal privilege, barring it from acting for its client in a $180m dispute.
Russian businessman Mikhail Shlosberg last month secured an injunction against Dechert acting for creditor Avonwick in the case, which has set a precedent on legal privilege.
More firms set to repay bank if targets missed
Barclays is planning to extend the value account system it introduced in 2014, where law firms are required to pay a rebate if they fail to hit their value targets, to all external advisers as part of its current panel review.
Continue reading “Barclays to extend value accounts framework as part of latest panel review”
Launch of US corporate review follows UK panel selection
Pearson, the largest education company and book publisher in the world, has launched its US corporate panel review after finalising spots on its litigation roster for the region. The US changes come after Pearson finalised its UK roster in recent months with the help of Accenture.
Continue reading “Pearson kicks off second US panel review after finalising litigation roster”
Pitching himself as an outward-facing leader has paid off for Linklaters M&A heavyweight Charlie Jacobs (pictured), who won the firm’s senior partner election last month.
Jacobs defeated competition from corporate colleagues Jean-Pierre Blumberg and Aedamar Comiskey to be elected the new senior partner at the Magic Circle firm.
Jacobs will replace Robert Elliott when he finishes a five-year term at the end of September.
The fashion is for UK firms to announce good results early and first out of the blocks this year have been Osborne
Clarke (OC), Forsters, TLT and Browne Jacobson all posting robust results for the financial year 2015/16.
OC was the first of the Legal Business 100 to release figures this year, with a 23% rise in global revenues to €236.3m. As the firm posted a UK revenue rise of 17% from £96.5m in 2015 to £112.9m, managing partner Ray Berg identified OC’s sector focus as a factor in its continued success.
