Hamish McNicol assesses the adviser mood as clients flex buying power
‘Would I say it’s the norm? No. But would I say I’m surprised? No.’ Continue reading “‘There will be pushback’: Dawn of pay-to-play tenders will stoke law firm tensions with GCs”
With Brexit entrenching divisions, Britain’s patchwork constitution is being increasingly pitted against political upheaval. Do legal experts see crisis brewing?
Britain has developed an uncharacteristically laid-back attitude to constitutional change, with once-rare reforms to the UK’s ad hoc democratic settlement coming at a startling pace in recent years. The previous Labour administration ushered in varying degrees of devolution in Scotland and Wales, before in 2003 pulling the UK’s highest court out of the House of Lords and into the new Supreme Court (tacked on was reform of the Lord Chancellor’s historic role). The process of further EU integration under the Maastricht Treaty, not to mention Labour’s 1998 Human Rights Act, which gave domestic force to the European Convention on Human Rights, also had significant impact. Continue reading “Brexit vs Dicey – The constitutional lawyer’s view on these strange days”
Thomas Alan finds reality setting in for creditors and former partners more than two years on
‘My immediate thought was: “Can’t we just move on?” I can’t be bothered with it,’ says one former King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) Europe and Middle East partner when asked for their thoughts on the firm’s latest administration report. Indeed, it is hard not to share some of the sentiment. Two years after the collapse of KWM EUME, the saga continues to limp forward in a fashion considered onerous even by law firm insolvency standards. Continue reading “Apathy and a multimillion-pound shortfall define beleaguered KWM Europe insolvency”
Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (LBIE)’s 5,500 employees left the London office at 25 Bank Street on Friday 12 September 2008 expecting to return on Monday morning to their weekly routine. As did their colleagues in the rest of the world.
Not that life had been easy up to that point. Global financial turmoil had been going for around a year and Lehman had just posted a $3.9bn third-quarter loss amid the subprime mortgage crisis. Yet, the sense was that the bank founded in 1850 would be bought out by either Barclays or Bank of America, despite the US government’s resistance to bailing it out. Continue reading “‘No blueprint’: Looking back at Lehman’s wind-up”
Nathalie Tidman looks at the struggle for the City elite as US players dominate home and away
‘People like me, making the switch from the Magic Circle to a US firm – a Kirkland, a Latham, a White & Case – did so because being a powerhouse in the US is critical to becoming a truly global law firm.’ Continue reading “Stars and stripes in their eyes – assessing the US ambitions of A&O and Freshfields”
This time last year, a collective sigh of relief from City dealmakers was reverberating around the Square Mile as the M&A market regained momentum despite a backdrop of economic and political uncertainty. Since then, deal counsel have barely paused for breath, with many juggling multiple deals well into the parts of August in which even the most committed deal junkie would expect to be pretending not to check work emails on a sun lounger.
Such boom-time dynamics are borne out by the latest Mergermarket figures for H1 2018, which saw announced global M&A deals hit $1.94trn, its highest value since the financial crisis. Continue reading “Mega-deals and convergence stoke M&A but subdued volumes and volatile conditions linger”
