Utility company South Staffordshire Plc has cut its informal panel from 25 to four with DWF, Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co, SGH Martineau and SAS Daniels being awarded the mandate to advise the company. The review was initiated following the appointment of general counsel (GC) Gareth Brewerton, who joined the company in October from SGH […]
Watson Farley & Williams has overhauled its remuneration to fixed-share partners in the wake of HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) national insurance (NI) crackdown. Each of the firm’s London-based non-equity partners has agreed to contribute just over 20 per cent of their remuneration into a separate pooled fund. This will be redistributed to FSPs in the […]
Insurance group QBE has turned to Australian supermarket chain Woolworths for its new group general counsel, hiring Peter Horton to succeed incumbent Duncan Ramsay who is leaving the organisation after 21 years. Horton will join the insurance group’s Sydney headquarters on 9 June after a nine-year tenure as Woolworths GC and company secretary. He will also take […]
Ashurst’s former senior partner Geoffrey Green has been appointed as a strategic adviser by its Chinese alliance firm Guantao as the firm puts its long-term strategy under review. Green, who was as Ashurst’s senior partner between 1998 and 2008, will advise Guantao on management, strategic planning and business development issues. The part-time role will not […]
The relationship between client and external lawyer is fundamental to the business of law. To that end, last year The Lawyer created the first-ever award for excellence in client service in which private practice lawyers had to be nominated by the clients they serve. The award, which is sponsored by Saunderson House for the second […]
How music giant Universal and its external legal adviser maintain a harmonious and enduring working relationship The music industry is in crisis. Physical sales of music have decreased dramatically in the past decade. Although digital sales and legitimate streaming via services such as Spotify have increased, they have not filled the gap. Instead, that gap […]
Our focus this week is on a relationship: we profile the general counsel of Universal Music Richard Constant with his favoured external lawyer, Stephen Kon of KWMSJB, a year after the titanic merger with EMI was given the nod. What emerges most strongly from the double interview (Cover story, page 10) is that the […]
Ruling on whistle-blowers’ rights and member status has LLPs in a spin Employment lawyers branded it a “significant” decision, one that could potentially force the 64,000 LLPs in the UK to look again at their membership agreements and consider how members be classified under modern employment law. Last week the Supreme Court ruled that LLP […]
Top-dollar lawyer Stephen Lucas will have to bring home the bacon for Kirkland Is any lawyer worth busting your firm’s compensation structure for? Perhaps one at the pinnacle of their niche in the market. This is the quandary that faced Weil Gotshal & Manges back in 2011 when it hired Linklaters partner Stephen Lucas to […]
My determination to do battle with all attempts to devalue the art of lawyering was forged under the influence of some inspiring thinkers on English law When The Lawyer invited me to be a guest columnist I paused before responding. Don’t the Brits have stricter libel laws than we do in the US, I thought? […]
Move of the week Payne Hicks Beach has hired former Manches partner Rebecca Cockcroft. She joins the family department as a partner. Cockroft’s practice focuses on all areas of family law including divorce, matrimonial finance, children, cohabitation, pre-nuptial agreements and Hague Convention cases. Her areas of specialism include complex financial cases,particularly with an international dimension, […]
As international firms question their future in these small, closely linked markets, local lawyers too are eyeing the business environment with caution In the past few years foreign direct investment (FDI) into the Czech Republic has been up and down, to say the least. An all-time high of €9.4bn (£7.7bn) – much of it from […]