Paul Hastings, which is intent on bulking up its English and US law finance practice in the City, has boosted its leveraged finance practice with the hire of Ashurst‘s banking partner Luke McDougall.
Continue reading “Building the team: Paul Hastings hires Ashurst banking partner”
Insurance specialist Kennedys, which has been boosting its international ties in recent months, has entered into another formal association – this time with Chilean insurance boutique Sateler Depolo Diemoz (SDD).
Continue reading “International ambitions: Kennedys enters formal association with Chilean boutique”
‘We’re not a corporate firm, we’re an investors’ firm.’ That simple statement by one partner stood out more than any other during a recent meeting with Ropes & Gray. The point being made was that the firm – and its rapid progress in the City – had not been built on the back of large corporate or investment banking clients – it was focused on a range of sponsors and funds, in particular in private equity and leveraged finance.
Continue reading “Comment: A new model, a new game as US firms secure a decisive victory”
Last week saw specialist and US firms strengthen their presence in the City and Europe as Kingsley Napley strengthened its disputes offering, Lee & Thompson hired a head of sports, Greenberg Traurig Maher brought in a corporate partner to its London office and McDermott Will & Emery hired a team of private equity lawyers in Paris.
Continue reading “Revolving doors: Specialists and US firms build up in the City”
Hogan Lovells plus a host of US firms have won roles on GE’s major financial restructuring, including the $26.5bn sale of its real estate assets, as it tries to create a ‘simpler and more valuable company’ by selling most of GE Capital’s assets.
A long, long time ago when I used to report on fund management, one of the defining figures was Tony Dye, then the chief investment officer of Phillips & Drew, one of the City’s most storied asset management houses.
Dye earned himself the nickname ‘Dr Doom’ through his bearish stance on equities, in particular by making the case that global stock markets were overvalued as the 1990s wore on. By the end of that decade, there were a growing number sharing that conviction as the dot-com mania and a takeover boom hiked valuations. But Dye made the case as early as 1995, years before the market turned.
Continue reading “Being right in real life is much harder than being right intellectually”
One of the biggest mysteries of the UK legal industry since the wipe-out of 2008/09 is whatever happened at Addleshaw Goddard. The firm had a fine pedigree, the best partnership in the North West, a client-base to die for and a credible City merger under its belt in 2003 when it hooked up with Theodore Goddard.
Rivals often point to the lack of an international practice as holding the firm back but there are plenty of firms in its weight class that have performed strongly since 2009 with relatively lean international networks or none at all, among them Macfarlanes, RPC, Stephenson Harwood, Mishcon de Reya and Travers Smith.
Continue reading “The window opens for Addleshaws but only for so long”
‘We’re not a corporate firm, we’re an investors’ firm.’ That simple statement by one partner stood out more than any other during a recent meeting with Ropes & Gray. The point being made was that the firm – and its rapid progress in the City – had not been built on the back of large corporate or investment banking clients – it was focused on a range of sponsors and funds, in particular in private equity and leveraged finance. The same partner stressed the cultural impact on Ropes of being bred in Boston, a major hub for investors and funds, not banks.
As we note in our analysis, ‘The third wave’ as part of our annual Global London report, this approach is driving a new breed of US firms in the City who have proved able to move at unprecedented speed. The second wave of US expansion in London in the late 1990s and early 2000s focused on generalism and targeting corporate and mainstream banking work… and largely ran into a brick wall as such clients remained wedded to their established local advisers.
Continue reading “A new model, a new game as US firms secure a decisive victory”
Jaishree Kalia follows the contest between the firm’s disputes and corporate partners Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s former disputes and corporate heads are expected to be the frontrunners among those campaigning for the senior partner role as the firm kicks off the election process.
The nominations for the firm’s new generation of leadership, which is overseen by its partnership council, were already underway as Legal Business went to press and were expected to close in early April.
In-house heavyweight Graham Vinter is set to retire as the general counsel (GC) of BG Group later this year, with Norwegian aluminium manufacturer Sapa’s GC, Tom Melbye Eide, lined up to take on the role from 1 September.
Vinter joined BG Group in 2007 after 27 years with Allen & Overy (A&O), including two decades as a partner and acting as the Magic Circle firm’s global head of projects from 1996 to 2007. BG Group’s legal team currently comprises 82 lawyers and recently worked on the $5bn sale of its Australian gas pipeline network to APA Group.
Continue reading “Graham Vinter set to retire as BG Group appoints a new GC”
The annual round of partner promotions at City firms looked a lot more international this year as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Slaughter and May, Addleshaw Goddard, Mishcon de Reya and Pinsent Masons announced who made the grade, while there were also signs the profession is improving its gender diversity record.
Slaughter and May, which last year made up its highest number of international promotions as it elected three Hong Kong associates to partner, made up four partners as part of its London round. With law firms under pressure and pushing to improve gender diversity, this latest round puts the firm in good stead to achieve a more balanced partnership in the years to come, with two of those made up being women. Last year three out of seven London promotions were female.
Continue reading “Gender diversity improves as law firms make bumper partner promotions”
I fell into a career that suits me. I’ve done interesting things that kept me motivated and worked with intelligent, motivated people. I’ve never had a patch I didn’t enjoy.
I was the second person from my South Wales school to go to Oxford or Cambridge. All of the law firms at the time were recruiting heavily – nothing changes – I sent some printed CVs. It was quicker than filling in forms and Clifford Turner was one of them.
National thoroughbred Addleshaw Goddard has consistently struggled to find its form since the credit crunch. Kathryn McCann assesses if new MP John Joyce can galvanise the firm.
‘There is a general sense of optimism in the firm at the moment,’ comments one former Addleshaw Goddard partner of their old shop. ‘But then you have got to realise how bad it was. The reason why people are so upbeat is because the last four or five years have been nothing short of a disaster. It has stopped the rot, but the big challenge is what’s going to happen next.’
Continue reading “Last orders – Addleshaws gets behind its new leader, but can it regain its form?”
With the publication of our annual Global London report, leading figures at foreign firms in the City assess their performance and how the market is shaping up.
‘In doing offshore, you become quite a good barometer. My sense is that people feel a lot more confident than two years ago – it’s still quite driven by sectors. We’re almost 50% up on where we were at in 2013, mostly from the finance space. Quite perversely, we’ve slimmed down numbers but grown the book of business.’
Jack Boldarin, London managing partner, Walkers
Contract lawyer businesses have hugely expanded in recent years with law firms increasingly entering the market. But are clients getting what they want?
Inevitably, it was a late epiphany for law firms when it came to offering contract lawyer services. Having belatedly realised that their clients’ post-recession demands for reduced costs and flexible resourcing were not a fad, top 50 UK law firms have spent the last few years playing catch up.
Having lost ground to contract lawyer providers such as Axiom, Obelisk, Halebury, SSQ Interim Solutions and Lawyers On Demand (LOD), which was launched by Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) in 2007, firms including Eversheds, Allen & Overy (A&O), Pinsent Masons, DAC Beachcroft, Simmons & Simmons and Addleshaw Goddard have all launched their own varying contract lawyer models.
Continue reading “So demanding – are contract lawyers business delivering for clients?”
DLA Piper ended its long wait to seal a merger in Canada last month after partners at Vancouver-based Davis voted to become the 33rd country in the firm’s sprawling empire.
The merger, due to complete this month, will add around 250 Canadian lawyers, including 112 partners, to DLA Piper’s 4,000-lawyer operation. While it is used to seeing the international LLP of DLA making acquisitions, the deal is the largest carried out by the US LLP and the Canadian firm will operate in a verein structure with the US branch.
Continue reading “DLA Piper’s Canada merger to build on west coast roots and target Toronto”
Mass hire from Pillsbury sees 15 partners defect.
Winston & Strawn, which had been looking to bolster its finance and corporate teams, pulled it off in a single move last month by hiring 15 Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman partners across five offices. The bulk of the hires were senior figures, including global finance chief Mats Carlston and London-based co-head of energy, infrastructure and projects, James Simpson.
Continue reading “Winston & Strawn pulls in corporate and finance teams”
With Akin Gump and Cooley securing multimillion-pound teams, a wave of new entrants to the City are re-writing the playbook for expansion in London. What is driving the new breed?
Sitting in the airport lounge at Fort Worth, Texas, flicking through magazines and eating stale sandwiches, 25 maintenance staff waited to board flights to London, Frankfurt and Hong Kong. While they were less than thrilled to be spending their weekends rewiring computers, moving desks and changing security codes for a bunch of lawyers thousands of miles from home, the woman who sent them was jubilant, having just pulled off the deal that would reposition her law firm as a genuine international player.
High-flying City firm Mishcon de Reya recently kicked off a review of its strategy, aiming to create a ten-year vision. Managing partner Kevin Gold, last month named Management Partner of the Year at the Legal Business Awards, talks to Sarah Downey about the firm’s future as a limited liability partnership, its Manhattan struggles and his leadership style.
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Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Peter Gray was found to have deliberately misled the High Court regarding evidence presented in a case between the Republic of Djibouti and Abdourahman Boreh, one of the African country’s wealthiest citizens.
In a ruling handed down last month, Justice Flaux said: ‘I find that Mr Gray engaged in a strategy of equivocation and evasion which was not one which any reputable and honest solicitor could ever have adopted and the concept of “acceptable evasion” is clearly anathema to the standards of professional conduct to be expected of an officer of the court.’
Continue reading “Gibson Dunn partner suspended after misleading High Court”
