RADCLIFFES & Co partners Christopher Jackson and Martin Walsh have left the Westminster firm as it gears up for its imminent merger with London practice Crossman Block. The pair, who handed in their notice in January, start this week as partners in the 14-partner corporate and commercial group at Richards Butler. They join trainee solicitor […]
THE RECOVERING mergers and acquisitions (M&A) business is keeping Slaughter and May at the top of the Acquisitions Monthly deals list for firms acting for both companies and financial advisers. The figures, due to be published next month, show that the firm has advised on 12 deals worth a total of £12.7 billion. Freshfields, Herbert […]
AN ACTION which cited 59 defendants including the Pope, Lord Mackay and the Home Secretary as co-respondents in the “unfair, wrongful and illegal” sacking of a Catholic school headmistress has been dismissed by the High Court. The case, brought by litigant-in-person Frances Warburton Staley, was struck out in the Chancery Division last week by Mr […]
COUNCIL lawyers are being targeted by a legal firms network which offers a quality accreditation scheme as part of its membership package. The programme run by LawGroup UK aims to give councils a quality standard which will give them an edge as they fight for work under competitive tendering. Surrey-based LawGroup already has more than […]
THREE district councils have announced important new appointments to bolster their legal departments. Stroud, in Gloucestershire, has recruited Mark Williams to become its head of legal services from Carrick District Council in Cornwall. Williams, a member of the experts’ network of the Law Society’s Local Government Group, has been with Carrick Council for the past […]
A West End/City engagement between Brecher & Co and Nicholson Graham & Jones (NGJ) could end with a late summer wedding. Brechers’ dowry will be its vast property and related client base, sought after by corporate finance-oriented NGJ. Brechers would provide an equivalent of around 25 per cent of the income of a combined practice, […]
Scottish & Newcastle’s £425 million bid for Fosters-owned Courage, the mega brewery deal involving Freshfields and Linklaters & Paines, could be delayed by Government proposals for company undertakings. The DTI’s undertakings aim to ensure the newly-formed business will conform to Government policy relating to pub property ownership, as set out in the MMC’s Beer Orders. […]
A Senior Freehill Hollingdale & Page lawyer Dr Ellen Beerworth will this week chair an Australian forum on product liability. The conference, which will take place in Sydney, will pinpoint preventative practice as the key to avoiding product liability suits. It follows on the heels of a spate of recent actions in the country involving […]
LINKLATERS & Paines’ reward for ground-breaking legal work on Merrill Lynch’s takeover of top UK market-maker Smith New Court (SNC) is expected to yield a business windfall after SNC is integrated into the US giant. Ashurst Morris Crisp which, after many years of advising SNC, including on the Merrill Lynch £526 million acquisition, is likely […]
NEW YORK firm Sullivan & Cromwell has opened its first German office in the finance capital of Frankfurt. Launched on the back of a sizeable contract as US counsel to the global co-ordinators and international underwriters for the privatisation of Deutsche Telecom, the Frankfurt office is permanently staffed by two lawyers, including office head and […]
THE legal department of a district council is to be scrapped and the chief solicitor sacked as part of a controversial restructuring plan. Sheila Bull, director of legal and administration, is among eight chief officers who have been served notice by Walsall Council in the West Midlands. Legal work will subsequently be supervised by a […]
Michael Gillard looks at the machinations of a Spanish judge’s crusade against corruption in the highest government ranks Phoney companies set up to secretly channel kickbacks into party coffers; a fugitive police chief charged with embezzling public funds to amass a £2 million real estate portfolio and rogue elements in the intelligence service who bug […]