Do you have any idea what the ratio of business services staff to lawyers at Wachtell Lipton, the most profitable firm in the US, is? About 2:1. As our ground-breaking UK 200: Business Services report revealed this week, the most common ratio among top UK firms is way, way off Wachtell’s apparently generous ratio. For […]
Slaughter and May has advised client Hitachi on its settlement with the African Development Bank, ending a three-year probe into allegations of bribery at the Japanese company. The bank launched an investigation into claims Hitachi’s German and South African subsidiaries engaged in “sanctionable practices” to win a £3.3bn contract to build the Medupi power station […]
When an underground fire brought Holborn to a standstill earlier this year, law firms and chambers turned to specialists to bail them out of a potential crisis. This week’s ground-breaking UK 200: Business Services report has put the spotlight squarely on firms’ non fee-earning cohorts and in particular focused on the ratios between these teams […]
Seven months into his new role at Tullett Prebon, general counsel Philip Price was already finalising a deal with rival broker ICAP on the acquisition of its voice broking business. For Price, this was the first major transaction he was involved in since joining Tullett Prebon as its new group general counsel, having left his […]
Seven months into his new role at Tullett Prebon, general counsel Philip Price was already finalising a deal with rival broker ICAP on the acquisition of its voice broking business. For Price, this was the first major transaction he was involved in since joining Tullett Prebon as its new group general counsel, having left his […]
Watson Farley & Williams (WFW) has seen its global revenue rise 5 per cent in the first half of the 2015/16 financial year, up from £56.8m to £59.5m. Although the firm said its half-year results were up more than 7 per cent on a currency-to-currency basis, these figures equated to a 5 per cent rise […]
Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) has hired Schulte Roth & Zabel partners Peter Declercq and Sonya Van de Graaff, as the firm continues to bulk up its key practice areas in London. Declercq and Van de Graaff have joined the firm’s business restructuring and insolvency group, which is described as one of MoFo’s “core practice areas” […]
Infighting among the shareholder groups bringing a combined £4bn claim against the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has reached a climax with the largest group understood to be in talks to sue Lloyds Bank and Investec over non-payment of fees, The Lawyer has learned. Costs and funding have already proved key in this trial, which has been adjourned […]
Made.com general counsel Lisa Gan Tomlins arrived at the ecommerce homeware business four years after its launch. In that time it had transformed from tech start-up to reportedly testing demand for a £100m listing earlier this year. The fast-growing outfit had survived without an in-house lawyer until then, and Gan Tomlins was under pressure to prove […]
Linklaters chief financial officer Peter Hickman is among a list of former Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBoS) bosses who could face a fresh probe by the financial and regulatory authorities into the bank’s collapse. A 600-page report by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) into the bank’s £20.5bn failure placed revived […]
Clifford Chance has won a role on Carlyle’s exit from the RAC, advising CVC Capital Partners on its partnership with Freshfields client GIC. The transaction means CVC and sovereign wealth fund GIC now become co-shareholders in the RAC, after Carlyle parted with almost half its shares in the road assistance provider to GIC last year. […]
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) joint head of bribery and corruption, Ben Morgan, issued a warning to lawyers yesterday (1 December) that the body will continue to prosecute companies for wrongdoing despite a successful first deferred prosecution agreement (DPA). The SFO agreed the DPA, the first of its kind in the UK, with Herbert Smith […]