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Revolving doors: Clyde & Co launches in Hamburg with four-partner Ince team
Germany has today (12 February) taken centre stage in the European lateral recruitment market with Clyde & Co announcing the launch of a new office in Hamburg on the back of a four-partner team hire from insurance and shipping rival Ince & Co.
Clyde will be launching its second German office after Düsseldorf later this year, with Ince’s former head of English law Daniel Jones and head of admiralty and energy Eckehard Volz.
Litigation and arbitration expert Tim Schommer and cargo claims specialist Volker Lücke will also join Clyde from Ince, bringing the firm’s Germany partner headcount to six.
Based in Hamburg office since 2008, Jones has been acting for German and Scandinavian shipowners in contentious matters in London maritime arbitration and the English courts. He was also a member of Ince Consultancy, the firm’s non-legal arm launched in 2016 to offer financial, tax and project structuring advice.
Volz joined Ince in 2007 and works on shipping, marine and offshore matters, while Lücke qualified at the firm in 2006 and helped setting up its yacht practice. Schommer joined Ince as a newly qualified German lawyer in 2005 and specialises in in handling shipbuilding, ship repair, yachting and trade disputes.
The news marks the latest chapter in Clyde’s international expansion of late. The firm launched in Los Angeles , Mexico City, Washington and Chicago last year.
As for Ince, senior partner Jan Heuvels said the firm was in a ‘strong position to deal with the increasing mobility of lawyers, which is prevalent within the market’.
‘Over the last two years we have successfully restructured our business, including the adoption of a hybrid lockstep remuneration model that rewards our highest performing partners. This will inevitably result in certain partners seeking other opportunities.’
Heuvels announced the appointment of three new partners in Hamburg. Associates Götz Rahne, Christian Reinert and Martin Malinowski will be promoted to the partnership later this year, meaning the firm will have 13 partners and 23 other fee earners in Germany from 1 May 2018, spread between Hamburg and Cologne.
‘Our Hamburg office is blessed with a depth of talent and events such as this provide opportunities to reinvigorate our team and allow our lawyers to develop further in a collegiate environment,’ added Heuvels.
Meanwhile, north of the channel competition partner Satyen Dhana left CMS last week for Simmons & Simmons’ EU, competition and regulatory group.
Hogan Lovells appointed Tom McFarlane as EMEA head of transfer pricing. He joins from professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal, where he led the transfer pricing and tax-efficient supply chain management practice in London. He previously spent six years at KPMG.
Elsewhere Addleshaw Goddard brought its UK financial regulation partner headcount to six with the appointment of consumer finance specialist Clare Hughes will from Eversheds Sutherland and Lorna Finlayson, former head of Burness Paull’s financial services regulatory practice.
LLP round-up: Bird & Bird debt soars as rising partner count freezes top pay at Clyde & Co
While top 20 LB100 firms Bird & Bird and Clyde & Co both boosted their operating profit in the 2016/17 financial year, LLP accounts show that Bird & Bird also saw its debt grow while Clyde & Co’s rising partner numbers contributed to management and highest-paid member numbers barely increasing.
Bird & Bird’s LLP accounts showed pre-tax profit rose 9% to €103.5m in the year to April 2017 and the highest-paid member brought home €1.08m, up from last year’s €962,000. Turnover was also up 5% to €360.7m.
However the firm also saw net debt soar 24% to €49.3m. However, the firm’s chief financial officer Richard Olver told Legal Business the debt had been reduced to €30m as of 31 October last year.
He added that the increase in debt in 2016/17 was partly due to the figure being ‘slightly understated the previous year due to the financial arrangement for our new London base’, and partly the increased level of business and ‘clients paying more slowly’.
Bird & Bird moved to new premises at 12 Fetter Lane in September 2016. Last year the cost of the new building, equipment and computers was reported at €17m and the firm’s accounts showed debt tumbling 15% to €39.5m.
Olver added that the firm had since April 2017 implemented a ‘concerted effort’ to secure payments from debtors and asked partners to contribute more quickly without increasing the amount of capital required from them.
Bird & Bird has also unveiled its half-year financial results for the 2017/18 financial year, showing turnover rose 6% against the same period last year to €177m. On a like-for-like basis, the increase was 9%, the firm said.
‘The growth has been quite widespread across the areas we are focused on – the core sectors which are changed by technology,’ said chief executive David Kerr. Profit before tax was also up 7% to €52m in the first half of the financial year.
Meanwhile, insurance heavyweight Clyde & Co also filed its LLP accounts this week, recording a 14% uptick in turnover from £447m to £511m. The firm’s operating profit also saw a boost, rising from £117.4m to £124.8m.
Clyde’s highest-paid member took home slightly less than last year however, pocketing £1.37m instead of 2016’s £1.39m. The relatively static figure is explained by a healthy 16% upturn in the number of partners at the firm, which rose from 262 in 2016 to 305 in 2017.
The firm’s key management personnel, described in the accounts as ‘all designated members and a number of senior members and senior managers’ also took home less than last year. In 2016, £12.5m was distributed to the group, compared to £12.4m this time round.
The accounts show that Clyde took out over £76m in new bank loans in 2017, a significant increase on 2016 when the firm took out £10m. But despite the rising bank debt, Clyde’s cash position is more secure, with cash at bank and in hand growing from £18.2m to £28.3m. Clyde has also paid back £30m of the debt, meaning £36m of the loan is outstanding.
An increase in staff costs reflected an increase in headcount for Clyde, with the global number of fee-earners rising from 1,699 to 1,780 and the number of support staff growing from 1,324 to 1,494. Overall, staff costs went up 18% to £237.4m.
Revolving doors: Baker McKenzie and Clyde & Co double up in the City as international hires gain momentum
The City is stirring during a typically dreary January with at least six firms making lateral partner hires in London, while others bolster in Europe and Asia.
Baker McKenzie and Clyde & Co both landed two London partners in the last week, while Osborne Clarke, White & Case, Fieldfisher and Brown Rudnick added to the City moves with one lateral hire apiece.
Baker McKenzie added finance partner Matthew Cox from Ropes & Gray, while Megan Schellinger joined from Linklaters as a capital markets partner. Former European Commission head Jonathon Stoodley has also joined the firm as a special adviser.
Cox’s hire follows the recruitment of other banking and finance partners Geoff O’Dea and Matthew Smith, as well as Alex Lewis from Ropes & Gray as a private equity partner in April. Schellinger, meanwhile, will join the firm in March from Linklaters, where she is counsel in its capital markets group.
Baker McKenzie London managing partner Alex Chadwick said the appointments come as the firm looks to achieve greater bench strength in its corporate, private equity, tax and banking and finance practices.
Clyde & Co has brought in London insurance partners Mandip Sagoo and Angus Duncan from Mayer Brown. Sagoo is described as experienced in civil and criminal litigation and regulatory proceedings and investigations, while Duncan is experienced acting for insurers in the financial lines markets.
Elsewhere, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft lost its fifth restructuring partner in a week after Brown Rudnick hired Louisa Watt. Watt was head of loan portfolios, claims and debt trading at her previous firm, and her departure follows Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy hiring four restructuring partners from the same firm earlier in the week.
Osborne Clarke has hired its second private equity partner from Squire Patton Boggs in the past four months, as Alistair Francis joined Tim Hewens at the firm. To round-off the City lateral moves, White & Case recruited Hannah Field-Lowes from Weil, Gotshal & Manges, where she was co-head of international dispute resolution in London, while Fieldfisher hired Shepherd and Wedderburn data privacy partner Judy Krieg to work with Phil Lee in the privacy, security and information and also with Tony Lewis in the corporate crime team.
Further afield, DLA Piper appointed Federico Pacelli, a partner in its international tax practice in Italy, where he will lead the Italian transfer pricing team. He was most recently at Italian Euro Elite firm BonelliErede.
Eversheds Sutherland expanded its Paris office with a corporate hire, bringing in Sébastien Pontillo as a partner in its private equity practice, and Ashurst added to its finance team in Frankfurt with the hire of real estate partner Filip Kurkowski, who was formerly of Baker McKenzie and Allen & Overy.
In Asia, Mayer Brown hired corporate partner Brian McKenna from Debevoise & Plimpton, and King & Spalding brought in M&A lawyer Lee Taylor in Singapore. Taylor previously led Clifford Chance’s M&A group in Singapore and the south-east Asia private equity practice. King & Spalding’s Singapore office opened in 2010 and now has 30 lawyers.
hamish.mcnicol@legalease.co.uk
‘Another mechanism for unlocking insight’ – Clyde & Co launches tech initiative with UCL
Following the trend of tech incubator programmes set by City firms, insurance heavyweight Clyde & Co has launched a data analytics lab to develop products and services for its clients.
The new initiative is being ran in conjunction with University College London (UCL), with which the firm has a longstanding relationship.
Insurance partner Mark Wing and Clyde & Co’s innovation board are overseeing the project. The board, which was established in 2016, was designed to improve Clyde’s relationships with its clients by creating new products and services.
It comprises Wing and fellow partners Nigel Brook, Lee Bacon, Carolena Gordon, Leon Alexander, Patrick Murphy and Sally Sfeir-Tait , as well as chief strategy officer William Isaac, chief information officer Chris White and senior strategy manager Nadine Bairle.
Overall, the lab will be staffed by Clyde legal, data science and strategy staff in addition to students from UCL’s computer science department. The team will combine data analysis with machine-learning technology to develop new products.
So far, projects at the lab have explored predicting fraud in relation to claims, the likelihood of disputes going to trial or settlement, as well as potential litigation outcomes.
Wing said: ‘A large part of the value that law firms provide to their clients is the knowledge and expertise of their lawyers. As a global firm we have heaps of knowledge but the question we always challenge ourselves with is how we harness it as quickly and efficiently as we can for our clients. Having a data analytics lab provides us with another mechanism for unlocking insight, value and solutions for our clients.’
The data analytics lab launch caps off a productive year for Clydes in terms of tech innovation, with the firm launching Clyde Code in September, a consultancy focused on advising mainly insurers on smart contracts, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.
It has also been an internationally expansive year for the firm, announcing yesterday (11 December), that it had established a best-friends association with five-partner New Zealand boutique insurance litigation firm Fee Langstone.
Over the past year, Clydes has opened offices in Chicago, Washington DC , Los Angeles and also formed an association with Malaysian firm Shaikh David & Co in Kuala Lumpur. A Bristol office is also slated to launch in the New Year.
Locke Lord fined, Clydes ex-partner suspended, while Appleby hit by data breach
In a tough period for international firms at the hands of legal regulators, US firm Locke Lord received the largest-ever fine handed down by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) in November.
The £500,000 penalty handed to Locke Lord came after one of its former UK lawyers engaged in ‘dubious financial arrangements’ with a client’s bank account. The lawyer in question, Jonathan Denton, left the firm in October 2015.
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Clyde & Co, CMS and DAC Beachcroft pick up partners from an ailing Sedgwick
As US firm Sedgwick heads towards closure in the New Year, UK-based outfits Clyde & Co, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang and DAC Beachcroft have profited by picking up a number of partners.
DAC has hired a team comprising two partners and four associates from Sedgwick that will join its London office in January. This includes Mark Kendall, who led Sedgwick’s London international property and casualty team since 2010 and has also headed the firm’s Latin American group since 2014. Kendall’s practice has a strong focus on product recall and liability in sectors including food and pharmaceuticals. DAC confirmed that Kendall ‘shares a number of key clients’ with the firm.
Disputes partner Duncan Strachan will also be joining DAC in the New Year with a practice that centres on litigation defence in Latin American jurisdictions in addition to the UK and Europe. Alongside Strachan and Kendall, four associates and a non-fee earner will be making the switch to DAC.
Helen Faulkner, DAC’s head of insurance, told Legal Business: ‘While there aren’t many insurer clients that we don’t work with, Mark’s team gives us additional traction with some clients. We needed to build our bench strength in London. Mark and Duncan’s collaborative nature fits well with our culture.’
CMS has also tapped Sedgwick’s London office recruiting partner Tristan Hall. Specialising in financial claims and cyber risks, he will quit the US firm after seven years.
Office managing partner Edward Smerdon is now the only London partner whose destination remains unknown.
Meanwhile Clydes is looking to make a major US play, hiring two partners from Sedgwick to its San Francisco office, while discussions to bring in around 20 additional partners are ongoing.
Aside from San Francisco, Clydes is also in discussions with various other Sedgwick partners across the US. The firm will be seeking to build on the opening of its ninth US office in Los Angeles in July.
A spokesperson at the firm said: ‘We are sorry to hear the news of Sedgwick’s closure. We know many of its lawyers and hold them in high regard. In line with our own growth potential in the US, we are in advanced discussions with a number of its insurance partners, predominantly in California, about the possibility of them joining us. It would not be appropriate to comment further while discussions are ongoing.’
Clyde & Co sets up in Los Angeles to focus on aviation and insurance clients with two-partner office
Clyde & Co has launched its ninth US office, opening in Los Angeles with a two-partner team consisting of Julie Hawkinson (pictured) and Jim Koelzer.
The office will focus on providing insurance and aviation clients with insurance coverage and litigation defence services.
In a statement, Clydes partner and chair of the US board Bill Casey described Los Angeles as ‘a large and vibrant commercial center and hub for insurance litigation and aviation.’
Koelzer joins the firm from litigation specialist Robins Kaplan and will support the new Los Angeles office alongside current Clydes partner and San Francisco office co-founder Hawkinson. Both Koelzer and Hawkinson’s practices focus on representing clients in insurance disputes.
Hawkinson and Koelzer will lead a team comprising one counsel and an associate who also joins from Robins Kaplan. Clydes’ senior associate Natasha Mikha will also form part of the new team.
‘A permanent on-the-ground presence will help us deliver the best service to our clients and act as a platform to help recruit the finest legal and insurance talent in Southern California and beyond’, Casey said.
The Los Angeles opening continues a program of strong US expansion for Clydes in 2017, with the firm having launched in Chicago and Washington DC earlier this year.
A 10-partner team, which joined from Global 100 firm Troutman Sanders, were hired to open the new offices. Troutman’s Chicago office managing partner Eileen King Bower heads up Clydes’ new office in the city, while a six-partner insurance litigation team was brought in to staff the Washington DC office.
Clydes now counts almost 50 partners and 200 legal professionals in the US, with other offices in New Jersey, San Francisco, Miami and Atlanta.
Clydes also announced the launch of its first Mexican office in May this year, following a merger with four-partner local firm Garza Tello & Asociados.
‘Cavalier’: former Clyde & Co litigator struck off roll after string of misleading failures
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has struck off former Clyde & Co senior associate Rajpal Ahluwalia from the roll and ordered him to pay over £41,000 in costs after a series of failures starting in 2013, when he omitted to file a client’s defence.
The June judgment followed a 9-11 May hearing, at which Ahluwalia admitted failing to ensure that a client’s defence in 2013 was filed in good time, resulting in default judgment and £500,000 damages and costs.
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Clifford Chance turns to Clydes as SRA launches probe into firm on Excalibur litigation
Clifford Chance (CC) has instructed lawyers at Clyde & Co to represent it in an investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), reportedly involving the firm’s part in the Excalibur professional negligence case, resulting from a claim in which an appeal judge criticised CC for an ‘acute’ conflict of interest.
In 2013, CC represented Excalibur Ventures in an unsuccessful $1.6bn Kurdistan oil deal damages claim against Gulf Keystone Petroleum and Texas Keystone.
London’s commercial court ruled against Excalibur in 2014, ordering Lemos, an ad hoc investor which helped Excalibur fund the case, to pay the defendants’ indemnity costs of £13.75m on top of their original funding advance.
During the original case, CC partner Alex Panayides positively assessed the litigation, to which the funders looked for their lending evaluation. In December 2014, Panayides was sued for professional negligence by litigation funder Lemos, which was represented by Withers partner Christopher Coffin.
At the time, Lord Justice Clarke of the appeal court stated the claim had been ‘an elaborate and artificial construct… replete with defects, illogicalities and inherent improbabilities’. He said it was worth about $3.3m, not $1.6bn as claimed.
CC settled the professional negligence claim for an undisclosed sum in December 2015.
In November 2016, at the Court of Appeal hearing of the decision, it was alleged that Panayides overstated Excalibur’s prospects of success. The judges ordered all the original claim’s funders – Lemos’ company Psari, Platinum partners and Blackrobe – to pay indemnity costs up to the £20m total they had funded Excalibur.
As Panayides’ father was a chairman of the ship companies owned by the Lemos family, and his brother was a Lemos employee, the Court of Appeal also criticised CC, saying it had an ‘acute’ conflict of interest on the case.
The appeal judges said in particular that it was due to Panayides own agreement to conduct the case for Excalibur on a partial contingency that CC themselves had from the outset ‘an acute conflict of interest, the extent of which worsens as their own investment in the case increased over time.’
The SRA, CC and Clydes declined to comment.
tom.baker@legalease.co.uk