Pinsent Masons has strengthened its Asian corporate capability with the hire of three partners in Singapore from local rival KhattarWong and a senior lawyer in Shanghai from legacy SJ Berwin. In Singapore, Pinsents has added Perry Yuen, Kelvyn Oo and Bethia Su to its partnership, with all three joining from Singaporean firm KhattarWong’s corporate and […]
Welcome back to the start of the New Year proper and The Lawyer’s first print edition of 2014. And welcome also to what looks set to be yet another corking 12 months for litigators. You might recall that at the tail end of 2013 The Lawyer’s Global Litigation Top 50 report highlighted the spectacular growth in […]
Barristers are staging a mass walkout today in protest against the cuts to legal aid implemented this year. Counsel in cities across the UK including Birmingham, London, Manchester, Liverpool are voluntarily not attending court, affecting every criminal court in the country. The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) pledged to take action back in November when the […]
Tui Travel legal boss Mike Bowers rarely has time to relax with his company trailblazing in digital services and one-of-a-kind holidays, and a new EU travel directive in the wind The first time Mike Bowers worked in the travel industry was before he became a lawyer. The young Bowers spent time as a holiday rep […]
Law Society bosses feel the heat as profession demands more action against cuts Solicitors normally treat their professional body with utter ambivalence. So when some 500 of them swarmed into the Law Society’s London headquarters in Chancery Lane at the end of last year, something must have been up. For the most part, they were […]
Taylor Wessing offers IT start-ups five ‘magic beans’ if they sign up to fixed-fee product My name is Tech and the Beanstalk. Who am I? No, not The Lawyer Christmas panto production, nor an educational video game. Far from it. It is a fixed-fee service for technology SMEs. And there are no nasty surprises in […]
Move of the week Former Ashurst global corporate head Stephen Lloyd is set to join Allen & Overy as co-head of its private equity sector group. He will head the sector alongside the firm’s global leverage finance chief Tim Polglase and corporate partner Karine Kodde, who are based in London and Amsterdam respectively. UK […]
Opening European football’s winter transfer window on New Year’s Day triggers a strong gust of realism to remind fans of what the sport is about – money, and lots of it, in the players’ pockets. UEFA – the game’s governing body in Europe – is attempting to teach its member clubs good housekeeping by enforcing […]
Clifford Chance has been criticised for producing “voluminous and interminable” correspondence which was “in some circumstances highly aggressive and in others unacceptable” in the failed $1.6bn oil case for client Excalibur. Excalibur was slammed in the judgment for pursuing its case against oil rights “as if it was an act of war” and High Court […]
Trowers & Hamlins has announced the closure of its Cairo office, citing uncertainty over the long-term outlook for Egypt. In a statement issued today (3 January) the firm said with effect from 31 December 2013 “no further work” would be carried out by Trowers & Hamlins in Egypt. Resident managing partner Sara Hinton and “a […]
Bruce Dear, head of London real estate at Eversheds, has commented following the news that commercial property investment in London has hit a six-year high. He said: ‘The reasons for central London’s inward investment boom are not located in London, but in the countries where the money is born. The Middle and Far Eastern sovereign […]
Chinese firm Fangda has added corporate capability in Hong Kong with the hire of partner Andrew Lui from US firm Edwards Wildman Palmer. Lui’s appointment comes 18 months after Fangda opened in Hong Kong, through the hire of litigation partner Peter Yuen from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (23 April 2012). Lui is qualified in Hong Kong and […]