Weil’s City banking head Stephen Lucas joins Kirkland

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One of the best-known names in the leverage buyout market, Stephen Lucas, is set to join Kirkland & Ellis from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where he heads the Wall Street firm’s City banking practice.

Lucas handed in his resignation last month and leaves Weil Gotshal just three years after he joined in June 2011 from Linklaters, where he was a banking partner. Prior to that, he was a partner at Magic Circle rival Clifford Chance.

He will be replaced as banking head at Weil by former Hogan Lovells partner Mark Donald.

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In need of sponsors – can a bank-dominated A&O get the hang of this private equity thing?

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Jaishree Kalia assesses A&O’s latest attempt to break into the buyout game.

There was never any obvious reason for Allen & Overy (A&O) to largely ignore private equity. While a circular debate simmered in the City about the problems of combining deal finance and corporate, its arch rival Clifford Chance (CC) had long made hay in both leverage finance and private equity. A finance-centric law firm should on paper be in tune with private equity houses, while the lack of a public M&A heritage to rival a Linklaters would suggest the buyout barons would have made good clients to build its corporate brand.

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Always a bridesmaid: can Nabarro revive itself post-Lehman without a partner?

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Sarah Downey reports on the property leader’s attempts to position itself.

With its five-year financial performance standing out as one of the worst of the top 50 in last year’s LB100 and at least one abandoned merger talk under its belt, Nabarro is perceived by a number of clients and rivals as a firm in need of change.

Heavily dependent on a mixture of high-end but also commoditised property work, the firm has dropped down the UK legal rankings from its 2008 high, when it stood in 23rd place on the back of a revenue increase of 16% to £142.4m.

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OC joins Magic Circle on Dixons Carphone tie-up

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Carphone Warehouse and Dixons merge along with DEMB and Mondelez

Major M&A mandates have over the past month seen Linklaters, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Osborne Clarke (OC) secure roles on the £3.6bn merger of Carphone Warehouse and Dixons Retail, as Clifford Chance (CC) and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom led on the $7bn merger of the coffee businesses of Kraft Foods spin-off Mondelēz International and DE Master Blenders 1753 (DEMB).

UK top-40 firm OC capitalised on its longstanding relationship with Carphone Warehouse to secure a role on its May merger with Dixons, which also owns Currys and PC World. Corporate partner Jonathan King led for OC and told Legal Business: ‘Any merger of this size is complicated when you’re dealing with two FTSE 250 companies coming together.’

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Asia-Pacific: Taylor Wessing launches in South Korea with local tie-up

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Taylor Wessing last month became the latest international firm to set up in South Korea, establishing an association with local full-service firm DR & AJU International Law Group.

Founded in 1994 and one of the region’s ten largest law firms, DR & AJU will add 120 lawyers, including 18 partners, to Taylor Wessing’s international reach. The Seoul-headquartered firm also provides offices across Russia, Kazakhstan and Singapore, and services in M&A, litigation and various corporate matters.

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Hogan Lovells second global firm to exit Prague in a month

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Transatlantic firm Hogan Lovells has become the second top-ten Legal Business 100 firm in recent weeks to announce it is withdrawing from Prague, blaming difficult market conditions.

Following a ‘strategic review of the market’ undertaken by the international management committee, the firm is aiming to complete its exit from Prague over the summer, with the exact date still to be decided.

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Clyde & Co to launch in South Africa with Webber Wentzel hires

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Clyde & Co has launched two offices in South Africa with the hire of a four-partner team from Linklaters’ local ally, Webber Wentzel.

The new offices will be based in Cape Town and Johannesburg, headed by Daniel Le Roux, who currently heads Webber Wentzel’s insurance and legal liability practice.

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‘The right to be forgotten’: Cleary client Google dealt a blow by ECJ’s privacy ruling

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Decision contradicts EU advocate general’s previous non-binding guidance.

After years of attempts by Brussels to tighten up Europe’s data privacy rules in the face of US lobbying, in May the European Court of Justice (ECJ) achieved that effect by backing a ‘right to be forgotten’ against Google, in a blow for the search engine and advisers Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

The court in Luxembourg found that in certain circumstances individuals can request that operators remove the links that appear during searches of their name, meaning Google will now need to set up a technical solution to a potential minefield of requests.

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Clyde & Co whistleblower case sees Supreme Court hand partners protection

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Partners who expose malpractice in their own law firm will now be protected by whistleblower legislation, the Supreme Court ruled on 21 May, in a precedent-setting judgment that follows a claim brought by former Clyde & Co partner Krista Bates van Winkelhof.

The Supreme Court held – overturning a Court of Appeal finding in 2012 – that members of limited liability partnerships are ‘workers’ for the purpose of employment legislation and therefore have the same protections as employees if they have ‘blown the whistle’ at work.

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Barclays’ Americas chief Michael Crowl set to join UBS

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Barclays’ high-profile managing director and general counsel (GC) for the Americas, Michael Crowl, is to head UBS’ US wealth management division, replacing former permanent head Jonathan Eisenberg, who returned to K&L Gates earlier this year.

A spokesperson for Barclays last month confirmed the bank has, until a permanent replacement is announced, put in place two interim heads: New York-based Kevin Genirs and Marcelo Riffaud.

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