Victoria Young canvasses veteran lawyers on the outlook for bespoke financing in 2016.
It’s been flavour of the month for a lot of months now, but among leveraged finance advisers the conviction remains that 2016 will be another breakthrough year for alternative credit funds. Partners speaking to Legal Business say market conditions are ripe for such lenders, even as turbulence affects some larger sources of capital.
Victoria Young talks to Chris Lowe and Lothar Wegener about their ambitions for the firm
‘It’s not about: “Here’s an opportunistic piece – let’s grab that.” It’s about a continuous cycle of investment, not something which just happens.’
Chris Lowe, Watson Farley & Williams
My parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. My father came after being conscripted against his will in the Tsarist army and took a tortuous route via Germany and Paris. My mother came from Russian-occupied Poland. We lived in Stepney and my father waited for people to die and sold their clothes in Petticoat Lane market.
Before pop stars all we had were film stars. But there were glamorous lawyers like Hartley Shawcross, whose face was always in the newspapers as he was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg war trials. I’d never met a lawyer. It was a fantasy.
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is stripping back its global support network in favour of its new Manchester back-office centre as it closes its IT support function in Germany.
The news comes as figures finally emerge from the firm around how many staff currently reside at the firm’s new support and legal outpost in Manchester. The new hub, called the Global Centre, houses between 70 and 75 staff members at its temporary Arndale Centre location, and is expected to grow rapidly to 300 employees by mid-2016 – more than a threefold headcount increase over the next seven months.
Continue reading “Freshfields closes German IT support as Manchester hub grows to 70”
400 support staff to be housed five minutes away from HQ
While peers have chosen low-cost hubs farther afield in the UK, Clifford Chance (CC) is moving its back-office staff from its Canary Wharf headquarters to a new location five minutes’ walk away.
The firm will transfer 400 operational staff to an open-plan office in a building occupied by State Street Bank & Trust at Churchill Place in a bid to cut back on costs.
Continue reading “Clifford Chance avoids nearshoring with plans for low-cost hub in Canary Wharf”
Ashurst and RPC are among a quartet of firms that have won places on Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE)’s UK legal panel, with the drinks company also selecting Devereux Chambers as its preferred barristers’ set ahead of a review of its internal legal function.
CCE vice president for legal, Paul van Reesch, said after conducting a ‘deep review’ of its external counsel, Ashurst, RPC, Lewis Silkin and Shoosmiths have been allocated spots, following a competitive tender process between an estimated 35 law firms.
Both The Law Society and The Bar Council have called for legal professional privilege (LPP) to receive statutory protection in the forthcoming Investigatory Powers Bill.
The draft law, dubbed the ‘snooper’s charter’, will govern all of the powers available to law enforcement, the security and intelligence agencies and the armed forces to acquire the content of communications or communications data. While this has sparked debate about privacy, critics also say for lawyers, professional privilege is under threat.
Banking head takes over as Davies departs for Lloyds
Linklaters global banking head Gideon Moore defeated five other candidates to be appointed as the firm’s new managing partner in November, ending a four-month search.
Having been selected by Linklaters’ 13-strong partnership board as its next leader earlier in the month, the Magic Circle firm’s 450 partners gathered at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in London to endorse his appointment on 17 November.
Continue reading “‘A straight shooter’: Linklaters partners vote in Gideon Moore”
One of the first firms to benefit from sweeping liberalisation of the legal services market in 2012, Parabis Group has been placed into a pre-pack administration in a move expected to save ‘all but a handful’ of the 2,000 jobs at the company.
Peter Saville, Ben Browne and Anne O’Keefe of AlixPartners were appointed joint administrators over a number of entities within Parabis Group. Immediately following the appointment, a series of sales of the group’s legal services, rehabilitation and field services divisions took place.
Continue reading “Parabis carved up in £50m pre-pack administration”
Putting aside the rivalries that result in little collaboration or innovation within the legal market, DLA Piper has struck a highly unusual deal to provide contract services to its clients via Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP)-owned Lawyers On Demand (LOD).
The move sees DLA team up with LOD to create and manage a contract lawyer business. DLA alumni will be the catalyst for the launch, with around 50 lawyers expected to join LOD by the end of 2016 to service the global law firm when it requires extra resources. LOD’s current pool of 400 lawyers will also be available to DLA.
Continue reading “DLA strikes landmark deal to offer contract lawyering through LOD”
