The first deal I worked on when I qualified at Allen & Overy (A&O) was for David Morley and everything went wrong. On the Monday morning, I went to his office and he saw the look on my face and said: ‘Helen, don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.’ I turned around and walked out, but that stayed with me. The job of a lawyer is not to bring problems but to find solutions.
Irwin Mitchell’s outgoing chief executive John Pickering on change in the sector and why it was time to hang up his boots
Announcing his retirement last month, Irwin Mitchell’s longstanding head and current group chief executive John Pickering pointed to ‘the changing legal sector’ and his desire for the firm to have settled long-term senior management.
Speaking to Legal Business, Pickering, who joined the firm as an articled clerk in 1977 and now plans to pursue non-executive director positions elsewhere, explains his reasoning behind the decision.
BLP’s head of banking and finance litigation defects to King & Spalding
Hughes’ exit follows spate of departures from international firm
Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP)’s head of banking and finance litigation, David Hughes, is set to leave the firm to join the litigation team at King & Spalding.
Described by one former BLP partner as a ‘big-hitting litigator’, Hughes specialises in asset recovery (including ships and aircrafts) and security enforcement involving complicated capital markets products, as well as the enforcement of bond structures and International Swaps and Derivatives Association contracts. He also advises clients on fraud, financial irregularities and money laundering issues.
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Senior Clydes ship finance partner joins Curtis Davis Garrard
Senior maritime player Matt Hannaford is leaving Clyde & Co’s transport finance group with a team of three to join specialist shipping boutique Curtis Davis Garrard (CDG).
The commercial shipping partner, who is particularly recognised for his work in ship finance, will join CDG alongside legal director Owen McHugh, who will join CDG as a partner.
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‘A treasure trove for potential claimants’ – forex scandal to bring windfall of instructions to UK firms
US class action filed ahead of DoJ findings targets more than a dozen investors
UK financial disputes partners are gearing up to take on lucrative ‘break the bank’ instructions in the now global investigation into foreign exchange manipulation, as the US class action against a host of investment banks continues to grow, gifting Allen & Overy (A&O) with a lucrative New York mandate.
The class action, which has been filed ahead of any findings by the Department of Justice (DoJ) over whether traders colluded to manipulate the estimated $5.3trn a day foreign exchange market (forex), most recently saw over a dozen investors, including several large US pension funds sign up to an antitrust lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York.
CMS junior partners to pay up to £50k in response to HMRC shake-up
CMS Cameron McKenna has called on its fixed-share partners (FSPs) to make a substantial contribution of capital in light of HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) recent overhaul of the way partnerships are taxed.
Members of the junior partnership that fall into band one of the firm’s four-tiered remuneration structure have been asked to contribute around £35,000 to £50,000 each. With 90 partners in this bracket, this means a total capital investment of up to £4.5m.
A partner at the firm told Legal Business: ‘The firm doesn’t necessarily need the money – it’s not a call for borrowings or to meet debt requirements. It’s a call to even out the capital positions across the various levels of the partnership. People were not necessarily happy taking on more borrowings but it hasn’t caused any ructions across the junior partnership.’
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HSF shakes off post-merger politics in favour of sole global corporate head as Ferraro takes over
Setting aside the notoriously difficult post-merger politics of selecting one partner to run a core practice area, Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) in mid-April announced that joint global head of corporate Mike Ferraro will this month take over as sole head.
Fellow co-head Patrick Mitchell will, after four years as head of corporate, take up a new role as head of the firm’s infrastructure practice in both the UK and EMEA. Mitchell will work closely with Andrew Clark, head of projects for Australia and Asia, in the continued development of what the firm describes as ‘this strategically important practice’. Mitchell will also maintain his role in developing the firm’s presence in Germany.
European deal wave anticipated amid growing market confidence
Holcim/Lafarge merger and Vivendi’s SFR acquisition lead the way
Corporate partners are forecasting the next big European M&A wave after deal values this quarter shot up, partly on the back of ready debt finance and growing market confidence. Such conditions have supported a run of lucrative mandates, including the €40bn merger in April of cement companies Holcim and Lafarge and the acquisition of Vivendi’s phone unit SFR by cable group Altice for a total value in excess of €17bn.
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Linklaters and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer were among a host of firms advising on Holcim’s combination with Lafarge, a deal that, subject to regulatory approval, will create LafargeHolcim, the world’s biggest cement maker.
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Whose money making machine? Not all law firms will be richer in a bank-lite world
Cov-lite, cov-loose and even now cov-lame – in some pockets of the finance market we are back to the boom days. All we need is a couple of headstrong private equity partners to quit Linklaters for a more sponsor-facing platform and we’ll be right back to 2006. On second thoughts…
As our cover feature this month makes clear, the debt markets are going through not only a substantive revival but the non-investment sector is rapidly being dragged towards a US-style dynamic. This means European borrowers increasingly tapping capital markets and the role of banks reducing amid competition from other debt providers. The related vogue for upper mid-market and larger buyouts to be backed by high-yield bonds and US loans has obvious implications for City advisers since it tilts the playing field heavily in favour of New York law and US advisers.
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Behind the veil – Can Islamic finance live up to the sales pitch?
‘You can’t be a credible financial centre without having a credible Islamic finance programme,’ says Qudeer Latif, head of Clifford Chance’s global Islamic practice. With studies expecting the Muslim population to grow twice as fast as the non-Muslim demographic over the next 20 years global financial institutions and governments are falling over themselves to offer Islamic finance products.
According to EY’s latest study of the global Islamic finance market, the total amount of Islamic assets held by commercial banks was expected to have grown by around 40% from 2011 to 2013, from $1.3trn to $1.8trn. 78% of international Islamic assets are held in Qatar, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, UAE and Turkey. In Qatar, for example, Georges Racine, director of Swiss firm Lalive’s Doha operation, says that Islamic banking has grown quicker than the banking sector as a whole over the past few years as a result of its government’s supportive measures.
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ITV pulls in panel firms in new development programme
ITV is taking steps to embed its law firms in the fabric of the organisation by involving them in a new programme of training and development with its lawyers.
The initiative, spearheaded by ITV’s director of legal affairs and third-party sales relationships, Barry Matthews, together with general counsel (GC) Andrew Garard, will see ITV roll out a four-prong development programme this year that will see it work closely with panel firms to help them understand its strategy and commercial imperatives.
For lawyers with more than two years’ PQE, ITV has partnered with Olswang to run a ‘peer partnership programme’, in which private practice and in-house lawyers research and write together a piece of management consultancy to present to Garard and Olswang chief executive David Stewart.
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Davenport Lyons goes into administration as Gordon Dadds takes on business
After two rounds of failed merger talks Davenport Lyons went into administration at the end of April, with Mayfair firm Gordon Dadds confirming that it had taken on the client database, the majority of assets and secured nearly all of the partners of the West End firm.
The terms of the sale were agreed the week before by joint administrator Baker Tilly. A spokesman from Davenport Lyons said: ‘As of close of business on Friday 25 April, the legal entity known as Davenport Lyons ceased trading and the majority of the company’s client balances, work in progress and client files have been transferred to Gordon Dadds, who will also be collecting debtor balances on behalf of the administrator.
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The last word – the state of law firm leadership
With a spate of executive elections taking place recently, we ask the c-suite at leading City firms how management has changed over the last five years
CONSENSUS APPROACH
‘The command and control structure doesn’t generally work in law firms. Nonetheless, the last five years have seen a greater acceptance from partners for the need to operate more tightly and collectively. Partnerships will always have mixed feelings about their leadership. Leading a law firm is about managing ambiguity, ambivalence and disparate viewpoints.
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Not reached the bottom yet – sanctions on Russia begin to bite for law firms
Jaishree Kalia reports on the anticipated fall-off in deal work in the wake of Ukraine crisis
Russia’s volatile political environment has begun to impact the business of international and domestic law firms in Moscow as M&A activity falls, new capital markets work dries up and expanding sanctions cause increasing concern.
Western targeted sanctions imposed largely on individuals in Russia over its handling of the crisis in Ukraine have already had a crippling effect on corporate activity. However, it is the looming threat of yet tougher, broader-based sanctions as the situation escalates, with measures potentially targeting the Russian financial and energy sectors specifically, which could cause advisers even deeper problems.
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King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin hires A&O competition partner as globally KWM unveils promotions
King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin (KWMSJB) yesterday (30 April) announced the hire of former Allen & Overy antitrust and competition partner Martin Bechtold to its Frankfurt office, as globally the Sino-Pacific-UK giant promoted a total of 26 lawyers to partner, including nine in Europe. Continue reading “King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin hires A&O competition partner as globally KWM unveils promotions”
Profile: Graeme Colquhoun, Heineken UK
Global brewer’s UK head of legal on his no-nonsense approach
It’s a terrible cliché to invoke the plain-speaking Scot, but Heineken’s UK head of legal Graeme Colquhoun does rather fit the bill. The intellectual property (IP) and antitrust specialist turned in-house counsel is certainly candid about his strengths and how a legal team in a major global company should operate.
‘My skills are broad but shallow. I am much better qualified to be the lawyer for a corporate than provide corporate/property/litigation advice in a law firm. I’m direct – I don’t like to flannel around the issue.’
HowardKennedyFSI adds £5m to top line as it acquires boutique firm CKFT
West End firm HowardKennedyFSI has today (1 May) announced it has acquired Hampstead boutique CKFT, a union that will boost its current revenues from £40m to £45m.
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Partner promotions: Simmons adds eight new partners, half in London
Simmons & Simmons has promoted eight lawyers to its partnership ranks, just one more than the top-20 LB100 firm made up last year. Continue reading “Partner promotions: Simmons adds eight new partners, half in London”
Great expectations – Neuberger speaks
Lauded as the outstanding jurist of his generation, Lord Neuberger carried huge weight of expectation on assuming the leadership of the Supreme Court. Eighteen months in, Legal Business caught up with the UK’s most high-profile judge
Given that the Bar has remained in mourning for the golden generation of the Bingham-era House of Lords, viewed by many advocates and academics as the UK’s finest post-War judicial line-up, Lord David Neuberger had a lot to live up to.
Unleashing talent – highlights from The Legal 500’s Corporate Counsel 100: Latin America
As Latin America increasingly becomes a global economic force, the role of the in-house lawyer in the region has evolved to produce some of the most impressive names in the legal industry.
Below are selected highlights taken from the debut edition of The Legal 500’s Corporate Counsel 100: Latin America, which identifies an array of the region’s most influential in-house counsel.