Last year The Lawyer’s top 20 cases were dominated by professional negligence claims, with a number of law firms in the firing line. Many of these settled, with Clifford Chance escaping a £130m derivatives claim relating to the Berlin public transport system while Nabarro and Weil Gotshal & Manges also reached settlements before the claims […]
Allen & Overy (A&O) saw its total staff costs reduce by £15m in 2013/14 largely thanks to shifting a swathe of its support function from London to Belfast over the past few years. In 2011 the firm announced plans to transfer up to 180 support roles to Belfast, where it was launching a low-cost service […]
Conyers Dill & Pearman has provided BVI law advice to GFI Software on the sale of its TeamViewer business segment to Permira, one of Europe’s largest private equity funds. GFI Software is a portfolio company of Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, and develops IT solutions for small to mid-sized business with generally up to […]
Squire Patton Boggs has hired Simmons & Simmons’ John Hayward as a partner in its financial services practice group. Hayward was at Simmons for over three years. Prior to that he spent eight years as a finance partner at Berwin Leighton Paisner. Hayward specialises in the areas of acquisition and leveraged finance. His expertise also […]
Leigh Day and Hogan Lovells have taken the lead on the £55m settlement of a dispute between Shell and a Nigerian community affected by two successive oil spills in 2008 and 2009. Leigh Day senior partner Martyn Day brought the claim on behalf of the Bodo community in the Niger delta three years ago following […]
Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson has hired O’Melveny & Myers partner Daniel Oates to join its London M&A and private equity practice. Oates formerly worked alongside Fried Frank’s head of private equity in Europe and London managing partner Graham White at Kirkland & Ellis. White quit Kirkland last year to join Fried Frank in […]
The crop of half-year results announced towards the end of 2014 were pretty positive. All those firms providing figures reported an increase of at least 3 per cent for the first six months of the current financial year, Osborne Clarke leading the way with a 17 per cent rise. That positivity is reflected in the […]
The latest series The Apprentice caused the usual controversy – with limited success for the legal candidates. Anyone who has ever seen an episode of The Apprentice will know that the series guarantees to expose the sorts of behaviour that keep HR directors awake at night and the latest series, which concluded in December, was […]
French firm Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier has elected Cyril Bonan as co-managing partner, following the departure of Olivier Diaz to Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom in December. Bonan will jointly run the firm alongside incumbent co-managing partner Didier Théophile. Skadden announced the hire of Diaz a month ago (9 December 2014), couching the appointment […]
New research covering a range of firms from all regions and including the magic circle has revealed that 55 per cent of respondents believe that improving profitability is the biggest commercial challenge they face this year. The survey also asked how much law firms are expecting their turnovers to increase by in 2015. Respondents said […]
Ropes & Gray has beefed up its Hong Kong office with the addition of a former Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom partner who most recently was a member of DLA Piper’s partnership. Real estate specialist Eduard Sheremeta, who spent five and a half years as a Skadden partner between 2007 and 2013, joined DLA […]
Kirkland & Ellis’s City office had a bit of a hectic year in 2014, what with the trophy hire of Weil Gotshal & Manges banking chief Stephen Lucas as well as a series of high-profile departures. Aside from the defection of London head Graham White, who quit to become Fried Frank’s first-ever London managing partner, […]