Month: December 2011

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Spain: Up In The Air

With Spain wrestling a mammoth budget deficit, the former government initially decided to sell off certain prize assets. But after ditching the eagerly awaited partial privatisation of the country’s national lottery, LB asks if Spain’s top law firms are in the mood for celebrating.

On 12 October, Spain commemorated its Fiesta Nacional – the annual national public holiday marking Christopher Columbus’s 1492 arrival in the Americas. But with Spain’s economy still struggling there seems to be little to celebrate. The country is currently grappling with a budget deficit equal to 9.2% of GDP, which led to its former government deciding to sell off certain prize assets with a view to reducing the colossal debt.

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Suspicious minds

Third-party litigation funding has yet to really take off, despite being around for five years. While a mature market is still some way away, litigation specialists are finally seeing that self-funding is not the only way forward.

Big-ticket disputes in the public sphere and funded by a third party are rare. The biggest case in the UK to date came in 2008 and featured an £89m negligence claim brought by Stone & Rolls against audit firm Moore Stephens. The dispute was driven by Norton Rose’s Sam Eastwood for client Stone & Rolls and was funded by IM Litigation Funding. The case was thrown out by the House of Lords as part of its grand finale in 2009, gifting a massive victory to Barlow Lyde & Gilbert client Moore Stephens.

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Dual Core

With the number of large-scale tech M&A deals increasing in 2011, some believe that another technology bubble is forming. Following the coalition government’s pledge to help the developing local tech sector at Silicon Roundabout, LB finds out how law firms are placing their bets, and who is getting ahead of the game.

All eyes in the legal community are firmly fixed on East London. Taylor Wessing’s October move to open a second London office in Tech City, located near the Old Street roundabout, renews focus by commercial law firms on the technology scene, and signals a flourishing of the UK’s tech sector.

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Eurozone debt: Keeping it together

As the sovereign debt crisis threatens to bring the euro to its knees, a group of lawyers has been working behind the scenes to keep the cogs turning. LB finds out what happened backstage.

Lee Buchheit has faced a frantic few months. He has been advising the Greek government on how to sort out its massive debt problem. This has seen him shuttle between meetings across Europe for the past five months and spend more time in hotel rooms in Paris, Brussels, Berlin and London than in his hometown of New York.

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LA Lawyer

Father of five, two-time Hawaiian Iron Man competitor, climber, trial lawyer extraordinaire and co-founder of what can legitimately claim to be the leading global litigation-only firm. John Quinn has earned the right to put his feet up. Not a chance he says.

On a hiking trip to Wyoming a few years ago, a group of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan litigators, headed up by founder John Quinn, arrived at a freezing 9,000 ft lake. Quinn joked that the first summer associate to swim the lake would get a job offer at his firm. Turning his back on the group for a moment, he heard a splash as one of the keen students dived headlong into the water. True to his word, an offer was made.

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Red Tape – Banking and finance

As the regulators come down harder on banks and financial institutions, and Basel III, the Vickers reforms and Dodd-Frank are set to transform the banking and finance sector, which law firms are reaping the benefits?

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) raised £91.2m in fines from UK financial institutions during 2010/11. This marks a staggering increase from 2009/10 when it collected £33.5m. Since the start of 2011 it has fined individuals and institutions £38.4m. It also signals a backing up of the watchdog’s promise to flex its muscles, taking a more prominent position when it comes to enforcement, hoping to strike fear in the UK’s financial services community.

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