Dentons and Olswang have advised on the acquisition of Readers Digest by Mike Luckwell, the venture capitalist behind Bob the Builder, from Better Capital for the nominal sum of £1. Dentons advised Luckwell on the acquisition, led by corporate partner Philip Goodwin, with managing associate Gary Smith. Olswang was appointed for Better Capital, led by […]
The law school war shows no signs of ending. But we have, perhaps, reached the end of the beginning. One senior lecturer recently told Lawyer 2B that hostilities have subsided in the war of the law schools. The Legal Education and Training Review (LETR), he said, has made all providers pause as they wait to […]
If you haven’t already (and why not?), check out The Lawyer’s Behind the Law series of online articles, which give the colour and detail behind the news. And can there be any firm with more colour or detail than DLA Piper? This week’s offering from the firm that just keeps on giving (to be fair, […]
On 10 February 2014, John Baldwin QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the Chancery Division, delivered a noteworthy judgment concerning the use of trademarks in keyword advertising and in the search results returned by website search tools. This judgment followed a bitter dispute between the prominent online retailer Amazon and the high-street cosmetics brand […]
James Batham, retail expert and partner at Eversheds, has said that the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC’s) upcoming recommendations for overhauling business rates will be welcomed by retailers. The BRC is expected to publish its recommendations for the overhaul of the business rates system following the review undertaken by John Rogers, Sainsbury’s chief financial officer. It is […]
Litigation boutique Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has continued a year of international expansion with an office opening in Brussels. The office will be led by partner Nadine Herrmann, who joined Quinn Emanuel in 2012 from Allen & Overy to launch the US firm’s Hamburg office (1 May 2012). Herrman will divide her time between […]
Eversheds’ international arbitration group has been ranked within the top 20 firms in Global Arbitration Review’s elite GAR 30, which lists the most active arbitration practices worldwide. The GAR 30 list is primarily based on the number of merits hearings in which each firm has participated. A recent arbitration highlight for Eversheds was the team’s […]
Sackers has re-elected Ian Pittaway as its senior partner for his fourth consecutive term, which will run for three years from April 2014. The firm’s partners voted unanimously for Pittaway in the uncontested election. Since first becoming senior partner in 2005, Pittaway has helped the single-site pensions boutique to increase its revenue and net profit […]
By Jayne Flint The recent downpour has resulted in the flooding of many businesses. At the same time, employees are struggling to get into work due to their own homes being flooded or the closure of transport links. How can employers deal with these circumstances? Where the business itself has closed due to adverse weather, […]
Mishcon de Reya has been drafted in by fashion house Alexander McQueen to defend a lost earnings claim by an intern who worked for free but believes she should have been paid minimum wage. The intern, who goes by the pseudenym Rachel Watson, has turned to Hausfeld and Co, with associate Wessen Jazrawi instructing Cloisters barrister Catherine […]
Word on the street from City rec cons is that in US firm circles at least, things are picking up. And they certainly are over at the London office of Latham & Watkins , which has just hired its sixth major lateral in a year and its third private equity partner from Clifford Chance ’s […]
On 5 February 2014, the Supreme Court heard a joint appeal of two cases with different facts, but with the same issue to be decided. If a significant number of inhabitants of a locality (or neighbourhood within a locality) have used land for lawful sports and pastimes as of right for at least 20 years, […]