Morgan Lewis has hired Bird & Bird corporate partner Stephen Walters, adding to a string of recent hires from mid-tier firms. Walters, who was formerly one of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s most respected partners in Paris, joined Bird & Bird prior to the US firm’s collapse in May 2012 (11 May 2012). He specialises in public […]
Stephenson Harwood has appointed Thomas Eggar’s international and business taxation head James Quarmby to spearhead the growth of its private wealth practice. Quarmby will become the firm’s only dedicated London private wealth partner, when he begins his new role on 7 April 2014. The firm has also hired a private client senior associate, Vivienne Wild […]
Information and experience are invisible yet valuable assets which some firms are leveraging to build stronger client relationships How useful to your firm is knowledge management (KM) and your KM team? The question is more relevant these days than ever because even in this era of Big Data, automation and disaggregation, many firms are still […]
How Michael Chissick plans to put the spark back into idling Field Fisher Waterhouse Failed merger talks, ego clashes and management changes have kept Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW) looking back instead of forward for too long. Managing partner Michael Chissick stepped into the top role a year ago and is now on a mission to […]
Firm aims to shed second-tier stereotype by targeting ambitious trainees According to Simmons & Simmons graduate recruitment partner Alan Gar, top of most of his fellow partners’ wishlists of trainee qualities is ambition. At first glance, this seems rather anodyne. Like saying ‘we want the best, most enthusiastic candidates’. As opposed to the worst and […]
Debt can kill a firm but it can also fund ambition. Our first-ever market snapshot shows firms in the UK 200 getting into it in a big way “Theorist Nicholas Nassim Taleb says that if you’re financed by debt you’d better be able to predict future revenues and future volatility,” says Peter Kalis, global managing […]
Beyond the headline infrastructure projects, UK construction work is still recovering from the clobbering it took during the slump Q: What is the state of the domestic market in construction? Tim Reid, partner, Ashurst: The market is still patchy but there are some big projects such as Crossrail and, potentially, HS2. The Budget brought the announcement […]
Move of the week Squire Sanders has recruited Michelle Chen as partner in its global corporate group. She was previously director of China business at Berwin Leighton Paisner and before that was an of counsel at the same firm. Chen is dual-qualified and advises on foreign direct investment into China and on Chinese outbound investment […]
Sarah Nelson Smith, UK legal chief of KFC and Pizza Hut owner Yum! Brands took a fresh approach to panel review Kentucky-based Yum! Brands, the umbrella group for KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, is not the most obvious setting for a magic circle-trained oil and gas litigator, but Sarah Nelson Smith says the restaurant giant […]
Information and experience are invisible yet valuable assets which some firms are leveraging to build stronger client relationships How useful to your firm is knowledge management (KM) and your KM team? The question is more relevant these days than ever because even in this era of Big Data, automation and disaggregation, many firms are still […]
Gone are the days when a boss could storm down the corridor, blood vessels bursting and steam fuming from every orifice before barking at an office junior: ‘Smithers – my office now.’ And then behind closed doors proceeding to tear several strips off the beleaguered soul over some perceived inadequacy or fault. Modern employment legislation […]
A former Reed Smith and legacy Denton Wilde Sapte solicitor has been struck off and ordered to pay £160,000 costs for spending client money which should have been paid to counsel. City Law Financial founder Paul Fallon was struck off this week after ten allegations were proven against him, ten involving dishonesty. The Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) […]