From dating apps to entertainment venues, airports to music collections, there’s almost no industry left untouched by the multitrillion-dollar private equity market.
And, with these secretive organisations continuing to diversify their business into new asset classes such as infrastructure and credit, it’s an industry that is not only still changing but also still growing. Continue reading “High achievers – private equity is changing; meet the elite GCs at the vanguard of the transformation”
If you knew nothing about City law and the gender diversity problems it has at senior levels, you certainly wouldn’t think there were any issues when reading our feature on dealmakers and stress.
Clandestine conversations, a recruitment strategy on steroids, eye-watering salaries and internal politics galore, the Paul Weiss/Kirkland story has enough drama in it to keep the attention of even those outside the legal market.
For City partners, the interest in what’s going on has been off the scale. Continue reading “Talk of the town: Why Kirkland/Paul Weiss underlines the value of controlling the management message”
Whether it is the prospect of another few weeks still left of winter, many law firm leaders seem to have started the year under an uncharacteristic cloud of despondency.
Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to work out the other reasons why even the peppiest of senior partners might appear noticeably dispirited. The US contingent at least will be frantically number-crunching ahead of financial results coming out and, after the year that most transactional practices have had, the task will be about as enviable as filling out your tax returns. That said, early indications of double-digit growth from Milbank and Hogan Lovells may well prove those fears unfounded. Continue reading “Reasons to be cheerful: the hustle is back for 2024”
‘It is very difficult to see how AI competes with what David Higgins does.’ Looking back five years to our 2018 Global 100 debate, this remark from Milbank’s Suhrud Mehta, one of many eminent City leaders around the table, is striking in more ways than one.
The industry has come to think of the now ubiquitous subject of AI as a recent thing, prompted by the advent of ChatGPT, which we may be forgiven for forgetting has only been around since November 2022. The reality is, law firm leaders have been debating the impact of such technology for years, while singularly failing to reach consensus on quite how it can solve the age-old conundrum of increasing efficiencies, decreasing the load of banal grunt work, while at the same time not putting stars like Kirkland’s Higgins out of a job. Continue reading “Doing the robot – Five years on, the same old AI debate rages on”
So much ink has been spilled over game-changing developments in recent weeks – namely the partnership vote in favour of the A&O Shearman deal, and Paul Weiss’ assault on the talent pools of the Square Mile – that it can be difficult to find an angle that isn’t hackneyed to within an inch of its life.
Nevertheless, a ring around senior contacts for a different take paid dividends, even if some of the suggestions are more about playing devil’s advocate and mischief-making. Continue reading “ChatGPT has drunk the Kool-Aid on A&O Shearman – let’s see what it makes of Paul Weiss”
Chatting with a male managing partner recently about – what else – the hire of Kirkland’s debt superstar Neel Sachdev into Paul Weiss in London, talk eventually turned to the Barbie movie (obviously).
With the managing partner intending to see the film soon, I ask him to report back on whether he thinks its messaging is as anti-male as many critics have suggested. His reaction? ‘Isn’t it about time something was not all about how great men are, for a change?’ This is an interesting point, and segues us nicely into our cover feature this issue on the City’s standout women dealmakers, five years on from our influential ‘Alphas’ analysis. Continue reading “Women deal stars prove you can have it all – but don’t worry men, you are Kenough”
As we go to press on Legal Business’ third annual ESG report, the data points gathered on firms’ ethnicity and gender diversity make for disheartening reading, not least because they are entirely predictable in their lack of substantive progress from last year.
In truth, the continued lack of engagement on diversity data as part of our ESG survey among many of the top 25 Legal Business 100 and top 25 Global London firms is wearing a little thin now. Continue reading “Big Law’s diversity stats remain uninspiring – time to revisit the problem of social mobility”
It’s surprising how much conversations around social media have shifted over the last three years. There used to be a tacit understanding that LinkedIn was for professional posts only, deal announcements, partner moves, conferences, market commentary and the like, while Facebook (and Twitter, if you really must) was for everything else. Hilarious memes and posts about your children/pet/culinary experiment/exercise humblebrag had no place on a professional networking platform.
That all changed dramatically with the onset of Covid and nothing to do but use social media as the main means of communicating with the outside world. One contact, who is rather more Gen X than Millennial, bemoaned an internal memo instructing people to show more of a human side in the curation of their Zoom backgrounds and on LinkedIn. Wasn’t this a bit awkward? Do I really want my clients knowing (horror of horrors) the ins and outs of my domestic life? It was a particularly British quandary, a cultural aversion to oversharing; the online equivalent of maintaining a professional stiff upper lip. Continue reading “Oversharing? Navigating social media can be fraught but there is much to admire”
This comment piece has been updated to reflect an announcement late on Thursday (2 March) that merger talks between Shearman & Sterling and Hogan Lovells have been called off. In a joint statement, the firms said: ‘As has been widely reported, our firms have been in preliminary and exploratory conversations regarding a possible combination. After careful consideration, we have mutually agreed that a combination at this time is not in the best interest of either firm. We have been deeply impressed with each other’s business, practices and people and wish each other continued success.’
It’s funny how the market gets about law firm mergers. Ringing around various senior lawyers for a hot take on what they thought of a Shearman & Sterling and Hogan Lovells tie-up, most were pretty scathing.
‘A merger of losers’ and ‘a combination of mediocre and mediocre’ were just two pejorative remarks being flung around the Square Mile. Few were kind. Now that the dust has settled on the idea, and I hold my hand up to playing devil’s advocate on this one, these initial reactions strike me as a little churlish. Continue reading “Shearman and Hogan Lovells – better the devil you don’t”
