Börse/LSE tie-up raises regulatory concerns
As Europe’s two largest financial market operators, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Deutsche Börse, begin their third attempt at a tie-up, concerns have been raised over antitrust issues.
The risk debate: The gate keepers’ burden
Our annual Legal Business/Marsh round table saw law firm risk managers debate their role in fighting on two fronts – against demanding clients and internally with their fee-earners
Our 2016 risk management report, published last month, looked at a number of live issues for risk management teams within the UK leading firms, most of which place those teams at the frontline of potential battles.
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Magic Circle trio land £2bn London City Airport sale
Three Magic Circle firms have closed the £2bn sale of London City Airport to a Canadian-led consortium of investors.
Linklaters, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Slaughter and May acted on the sale of the airport, located six miles from London’s financial district, which was completed late March after the Canadian consortium competed with two Chinese bidders.
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Eversheds and Gowling WLG target Singapore with high hopes for booming ASEAN economic region
International firms target local mergers in regional hub
Asia’s burgeoning economic growth coupled with new initiatives from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) community has seen further interest in Singapore’s legal market spike as Global 100 firms explore new ventures in the city-state.
Garrigues ramps up global push with London arbitration play and Chile tie-up
Garrigues continued its global expansion by hiring its first English-qualified partner in the City with the arrival of Winston & Strawn’s co-head of international arbitration, Joe Tirado, to start an arbitration practice. The launch comes in the same month the firm added Chile to its Latin American network.
Tirado will become co-head of international arbitration as the firm seeks to provide a London hub for disputes in Latin America, where alternative dispute resolution has become commonplace following a series of investor-state disputes stemming from the nationalisation of energy assets across the continent in the 1990s. Tirado becomes the second lawyer in Garrigues’ London office, alongside corporate lawyer Ignacio Corbera Dale.
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‘This is a gritty place’: Macfarlanes’ leaders on the hustle it takes to look effortless
Victoria Young talks to the singular City player about success and bucking the market
‘Strong culture’, ‘high quality’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ are phrases repeatedly associated with Macfarlanes among peers and former staff. And its recently re-elected executive has no desire to debunk the image of a hard-nosed, competitive shop.
Global London overview: The eagle has landed
Legal Business’ 14th annual Global London survey assesses the breakthrough of the City’s leading US shops in the past 12 months
Recently appointed to jointly lead his firm’s expansive City office, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher tax partner Jeffrey Trinklein recalls a visit to London in the early nineties. ‘Back then, the US offices in London were 100% American lawyers. Now it’s 10%.’
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Client profile: Richard Vary, Nokia
The comms and IT multinational’s litigation head on the takeover of Alcatel-Lucent and its tax battle with India
When asked what keeps him in-house, Nokia’s Richard Vary is quick to tout travel and the adrenaline as two top selling points of the job. His role as head of litigation has placed him in some interesting scenarios over his ten years working for the multinational communications and IT company. ‘It was my birthday last year when I arrived at work and then discovered we had a hearing in India the next day,’ Vary told Legal Business. ‘So my 43rd birthday consisted of buying a shirt and a pair of pants, and jumping on the next British Airways flight to Delhi, sitting there in 40° heat in this packed, humid courtroom in a woollen suit, trying to follow the details in a tax case in the most run-down, awful building. There were chickens and goats outside the door of this courtroom, and some guy asleep on the floor in the back row, just fast asleep, lying on the concrete floor in the middle of a trial. It was very odd.’
Are you selling judgement or process? Few modern law firms can excel at both
Charlie Geffen argues the legal market is segmenting between two diverging arenas
A few years ago the general counsel of one of the big banks told me that they only went to outside law firms for three reasons.
First to get advice on what to do. That could be on a deal, a dispute or some other objective of the bank. It requires senior time and is not particularly price sensitive. Let’s call that ‘advisory work’.
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Keeping up with Ross and Kim – the work to do on shaping the legal stars of tomorrow
CC’s David Bickerton says the profession is yet to master training the lawyers of the future
New entrants to the legal profession will be competing head on against Kim, the virtual assistant from Riverview Law, and Ross, IBM Watson’s ‘super-intelligent’ attorney, in delivering services to clients. Ross, unlike most of us, has the ability to research every resource of legal knowledge in seconds, and, even more impressive to the older ones among us, remember it.
Kiss the ring – patronage, in-fighting and exits threaten to stall Kirkland’s bandwagon
Jaishree Kalia sizes up the clashing egos and driving ambition at Kirkland’s City arm.
Flashy cars, Dom Pérignon and top dollar are just some of the things associated with Kirkland & Ellis’ City high-flyers. The top ten global law firm has been highly successful in London since setting up shop in 1994 to service trophy client Bain Capital. The practice is certainly substantial, generating over $180m in 2015, according to one partner.
The last word – Swoop to conquer
With the publication of our annual Global London report, leading figures at US law firms in the City weigh up a volatile market
COMPELLING ALTERNATIVES
‘Global corporates, wherever they are headquartered, are increasingly recognising that we provide the same depth and quality as the Magic Circle in London but also with a global platform that extends into the US. Outside of the US, it is comparable with the Magic Circle. When you put that proposal to a global corporate, then we can provide a compelling alternative as we can speak in English and American accents.’
Global London: The Barbarians storming the gate of City deal work
Mainstream M&A has for decades been the stronghold of the City elite… and the ground US law firms struggled to seize. As some of Wall Street’s elite ramp up City investment, is plc deal work about to fall to US invaders?
With seven days left on the clock to force through a bid for the UK’s largest pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, many in the City were surprised when Pfizer put forward a final £69bn offer on a spring Sunday evening when most shareholders were out enjoying their weekends.
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Global London 2016
Global London: European firms move into the unknown
Last year European partners voiced their fears over the possibility of the UK leaving the EU. Now they could be preparing for grim reality.
The issue on every European partner’s lips in London is the outcome and fallout of the UK’s Brexit referendum on 23 June. In last year’s Global London report, there was a palpable hope that Britain wouldn’t vote to leave the EU. Now European firms have to prepare themselves for that possibility.
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The journey continues – GCs keep marching onwards
For the 2016 edition of GC Powerlist we return to the original format of the report – launched in 2013 – focusing on senior general counsel (GCs). Over that time, the report has expanded hugely to become one of the most important strands of Legalease’s portfolio. Expanding the report also reflects the reality that in understanding GCs, you need to look at the specifics. While law firms operate on a few variants of the same model, in-house teams are defined much more by the industry and the individual company in which they work.
But there are broad trends as well. The upward march of the in-house profession that this report was originally launched to chronicle has, if anything, accelerated. While law firms are struggling for growth in many sectors, in-house teams continue to expand in the UK and take on greater swathes of work. It’s becoming increasingly mainstream to encounter teams with multimillion-pound budgets that put only a tiny minority of their work to law firms. Where they are instructing outside counsel, a good proportion of GCs now barely bother to conceal their tactic of pushing law firms down the value chain… and their teams correspondingly upwards.
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The GC Powerlist 2016 overview: Independent by design
The 2016 edition of GC Powerlist showcases over 100 senior GCs defining the most confident branch of the profession. The age of uncertainty has never offered more rewards – or challenges – for legal heads
‘In our game, regime change is a big threat. You end up seeing quite a few CEOs come and go and a lot of new managers want to change the deck. The GC, however, can be a reliable presence. I’ve seen a lot of people come and go so I know where the bodies are buried!’
Geoffrey Timms, Legal & General
Are we nearing the post-general counsel (GC) age? In the fourth and largest edition of GC Powerlist, the responsibility, pressure and influence accorded to GCs has only grown: primarily thanks to the multi-pronged regulatory onslaught that is reshaping the business environment.
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Outgoing Slaughters senior partner Saul to launch mediation boutique
Slaughter and May‘s longstanding leader, Chris Saul (pictured), will launch a mediation boutique once he retires from his role as senior partner on 30 April.
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Comment: Stefan Stern – Just remember, GCs, Enron thought it was all perfectly legal
Earlier this year the 67th annual oil and gas conference was held by the Center for American and International Law in Houston. Lucky delegates got to hear from a special guest speaker – CFO magazine’s chief financial officer of the year, 2000. The speaker displayed the trophy he had received for his work, and then held up another item – a red prison ID card. Continue reading “Comment: Stefan Stern – Just remember, GCs, Enron thought it was all perfectly legal”
Simpson Thacher tops first quarter global deal tables, as Davis Polk dominates Europe
Despite a looming Brexit referendum swaying levels of transactional activity, certain law firms are enjoying a healthy pipeline of deals with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett emerging on top for global M&A deal value in Q1 2016.