Oliver Bretz, former global head of antitrust at Clifford Chance, is leaving after 15 years at the Magic Circle firm to launch a competition boutique in the New Year.
Going in-house: Jardine Matheson hires Linklaters’ Parr as general counsel
It’s one in one out for London-listed conglomerate Jardine Matheson, owner of upmarket UK car dealership Jardine Motors, as the group replaces its retiring general counsel Giles White with his past Linklaters colleague and the firm’s former head of corporate, Jeremy Parr.
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Guest post: Christmas comes early – SFO scores 1st Bribery Act convictions
The SFO has successfully prosecuted its first series of Bribery Act convictions. On Friday the SFO reported that ‘Gary Lloyd West, former Director and Chief Commercial Officer of SAE, James Brunel Whale, former Director, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of SGG and Stuart John Stone, Director of SJ Stone Ltd, a sales agent of unregulated pension and investment products, were convicted of [a number of offences including] Bribery Act 2010 offences at Southwark Crown Court.’
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Q&A: A&O capital markets co-heads talk innovative solutions and sharing leadership
Six months on from being elected co-heads of Allen & Overy’s (A&O) capital markets global team, David Benton and Simon Hill (pictured) talk about market confidence, current focuses and how Peerpoint is a big part of their future with Legal Business.
Targeting USA: Linklaters reshuffles teams to boost corporate and disputes
Magic Circle firm Linklaters has moved its TMT and tax groups from its commercial division into corporate. The firm has overhauled a three-strand structure – corporate, commercial and finance and projects – in a bid to strengthen its corporate team as the firm looks to crack America.
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Global London: Respected Paris boutique launches City arm to target cross-border deals
French firm AyacheSalama has launched its first international office in the City with four partners as it looks to advise on client investment from London into France more efficiently.
Investing in law: Parabis secures £13m from Duke Street to fund upgrades
Parabis Group has secured a further £13m investment from private equity company Duke Street Capital with the aim to improve IT systems, property and staff.
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News in brief – December 2014
KING & WOOD MALLESONS HIRES HEAVYWEIGHT EVERSHEDS TRIO
KWM last month hired former Eversheds senior partner Cornelius Medvei alongside former international head of real estate William Naunton and former London head of tax Clive Jones. The trio will lead expansion plans for the firm’s structured real estate team.
Regional Insight 2015
Insight report on cyber security – Anatomy of a breach
With breaches impossible to stop, companies are focusing on managing the huge risks of a major cyber incident. We teamed up with PwC to gauge the client response.
In cyber security circles, it has already become a hoary cliché to claim that there are two types of companies: those that have been breached and those that have yet to discover they have been breached. This rang particularly true this year when JPMorgan revealed that 76 million households and eight million small businesses were exposed to its data breach over the summer.
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Cyber risk moving up the in-house agenda
General counsel (GC) are increasingly involved in handling cyber security issues at board level, reflecting a more comprehensive shift towards effective risk management, research from Legal Business and PwC has revealed.
In a survey of corporate attitudes to cyber security risk this autumn, which garnered more than 800 responses from a broad mix of senior corporate managers, owners, legal and IT, nearly half (46%) of all GC respondents said they had delivered advice to the board on cyber and data security matters in the last year. Thirty five percent of GC respondents said this occurs on a quarterly basis.
Fried Frank faces multi-million professional negligence claim
Collyer Bristow pays £24m settlement over Rangers advice
US firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson is facing a professional negligence claim at London’s High Court. Made by a former client, it alleges multiple breaches of duty over advice provided on the enforcement of a commercial loan in France.
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‘There is a fundamental tension here’: Lawyers nervous about exceptions to professional privilege
With government intelligence agencies and tax authorities coming under a spotlight in recent weeks over the sourcing of legally privileged documentation, justification and potential implications for such action has increasingly generated cause for concern among City lawyers.
It emerged in November that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal had discovered that legally privileged documents may have been targeted by British intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
A&O and Linklaters scale back in Russia as foreign firms feel the brunt of sanctions
Law firms scramble to reposition Moscow practice as EU sanctions hit home Russia’s volatile political environment began to have an impact on international and domestic law firms in Moscow at the beginning of this year, but as 2015 nears, and with multiple rounds of international sanctions imposed on the country, the situation has dramatically deteriorated.
US and EU sanctions on Russia have taken their toll on many located in Moscow, including Allen & Overy (A&O), which offered redundancy packages at associate level in October; Linklaters, which seconded 19 associates into other regions; White & Case, which reduced its Moscow-based headcount across both partner and associate levels; and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, whose office associate headcount dropped.
Life During Law: Jason Glover, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett
Clifford Chance (CC) was a great place to be in the 1990s. Geoffrey Howe deserves a huge amount of credit. He instilled that we were on a journey everyone else was seeking to replicate. The car was travelling fast. The concept of delivering that globalisation was a very powerful thing.
I didn’t have a plan but a lot of fortune. I took a view early on that there were hundreds of great technical lawyers and I would never be able to distinguish on just that.
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Guerrillas in our midst: LCIA takes action on award delays and obstructionist tactics
Tom Moore assesses the impact of the new London arbitration rulebook
The battle lines between arbitration lawyers and litigators have long been drawn along arguments of efficiency and cost. The urban myth, somewhat manufactured by arbitration practitioners themselves, that arbitration is more expedient and less costly than its cousin in the courts has long been dismissed, while increasingly the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) is not only competing with courts for big-ticket cases, but other institutions around the world.
Not always an ‘easy journey’: Q&A with Jonathan Scott, outgoing HSF senior partner
Tom Moore talks to Jonathan Scott, senior partner and chair at Herbert Smith Freehills, about management, why he’s stepping down early and his worries over the reputation of English law.
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Why have you decided to leave your post early?
We get all the partners together once every two years and, if we ran the election after our November conference, there would be a preoccupation with who would be the next senior partner. If we’re going to spend that money getting everyone together, it’s not the best use of time to be talking about internal issues, so I made a decision, and I want to make it very clear that it was my decision with some internal resistance, that we would have the election beforehand.
‘Fits our philosophy and style of practice perfectly’: Three Crowns hires its first female partner from Covington
Arbitration boutique Three Crowns has hired its first female partner, Carmen Martinez Lopez, from Covington & Burling as the firm boosts its arbitration capabilities, especially in the Latin American and Spanish-language markets.
H1 2014/15: ‘We don’t want to grow simply to be bigger’ – Taylor Wessing reveals 7.3% UK revenue increase
Taylor Wessing has today (4 December) announced its half-year financial results, posting a 7.3% rise in revenue for H1 2014/15 in the UK alongside a 5.5% increase internationally.
Dealwatch: HSF, Debevoise, Weil, and Freshfields double down on Sky Bet sale
Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) continues to cash in on its ever strengthening relationship with Sky as the digital giant goes through a major overhaul of its operations, this time advising on the company’s £800m sale of a stake in Sky Bet to private equity group CVC Capital Partners, which instructed Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.
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