Pannone has delayed a partner vote on its proposed merger with Slater & Gordon for a second time. According to sources close to the firm an email circulated to partners last Thursday (7 November) said that the vote, originally scheduled for tomorrow (12 November), had been postponed for a week. The delay means that an […]
Energy company KCA Deutag has appointed Pinsent Masons to its panel for employment and property across three jurisdictions in the first step of an ongoing panel review process. Four firms were invited to tender for the work after the oil and gas company identified the need for a single provider across several continents. Pinsent Masons was appointed […]
Dangerous things, mergers. I’m not talking about Penningtons’ takeover of zombie firm Manches, although that deal is tricky enough in itself – as we expose in considerable detail this week. I’m referring to the shenanigans at Ashurst, SJ Berwin and Herbert Smith Freehills, whose global mergers have seen partners skitter off in all directions. At all […]
Edinburgh University is to appoint its first head of legal services before the end of the year in a bid to cut its legal budget by 10 per cent. The new general counsel will report directly to the University Secretary and the University’s governing body, the University Court. Edinburgh University currently has seven in-house lawyers but […]
Advisers get stuck into the disentangling task, to unhitch troubled bank from group ‘Here for you for life’ reads the Co-op’s slogan. It probably doesn’t feel quite that way for its legal advisers at the moment. As the Co-op Group and the Co-op Bank continue their elaborate £1.5bn disentangling effort, details are emerging of the […]
Stephen Lloyd’s exit piles on the pressure, just when firm was hoping for a breather Ashurst has had more than its fair share of dramas in the past six weeks – a multimillion-pound merger, a shock leadership change and an overhaul of the board. Now, as they frantically search for the ‘pause’ button, they are […]
The curious case of Manches’ suicidal cashflow management and its eleventh-hour rescue by Penningtons
Path to outsourcing is not a smooth one for banking supergroup Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has seen more bombshells than an EastEnders Christmas special. In July The Lawyer revealed the bank was looking to outsource its retail & wealth and asset finance litigation teams to a panel firm, a leak that went down like a […]
If criminal law practitioners, incensed by the Law Society’s pliancy to legal aid cuts, pass a motion of no confidence, they will open the way for more regulatory change It is not difficult to see why the top bureaucrat at the solicitors’ professional body has become a bête noire for so many at the publicly […]
From Coronation Street to Legoland to Serie A football – glamorous transactions were grist for the mill last month, gilding the lily of big energy and infrastructure deals A flurry of media, entertainment and sport deals helped usher in autumn, adding a star-studded sheen to a background of hefty energy and infrastructure transactions. Shoosmiths and […]
Confusion over disciplinary judgments means lawyers can’t know right from wrong News last week that two Addleshaw Goddard partners had been fined £5,000 each by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal was met with disdain – not because they were fined but because it is unclear what for. According to the firm, partners Emmett Peters and David […]
The consensus approach to monitoring online privacy is more effective than imposing inflexible rules Data protection is unique among legal disciplines in that it is defined in large part by societal attitudes rather than on a rule or legal precedent. These attitudes evolve, changing the standard for compliance around a particular practice or disclosure. As […]