Slaughter and May has ousted Freshfields from the number one slot of a poll of treasurers at the top 500 companies. The survey, conducted by Chartered Banker magazine, sent a questionnaire to the treasurers of non-financial services companies in the top 500 companies by capital employed, listed in the 1997 edition of the Times 1000, […]
Camden Borough Council solicitor Amanda Kelly is alleging sex discrimination and victimisation by the council and her boss, chief executive Steve Bundred. Kelly lodged a complaint with an industrial tribunal in November last year after she received two letters from Bundred in August and September querying her ‘conduct and attitude’. Her lawyer, Gillian Howard, said […]
The annual conference of referral network Law Europe, founded by 32-partner Brighton firm Donne Mileham & Haddock, was for the first time attended by three American delegations keen to forge links with the group. Tim Aspinall, Donnes’ managing partner, warned the conference, which was held in Barcelona last year, that the Big Six accountancy firms […]
National insurance practice Wansbroughs Willey Hargrave is on the brink of taking over Manchester firm Vaudreys. An announcement is expected before mid-February and could come as early as this week. ‘Talks between ourselves and Vaudreys are at an advanced stage,’ Robert Heslett, senior partner at Wansbroughs, told The Lawyer. Sixty-partner Wansbroughs, which has its headquarters […]
Keith Clark has been re-elected unopposed as senior partner at Clifford Chance for a second three-year term. Observers of the firm say his re-election will ensure a tight grip is kept on its 10-year strategy to become the world’s premier practice, while the new managing partner, Tony Williams, who replaced Geoffrey Howe at the year’s […]
A MYSTERY US firm is placing advertisements in the legal press offering a UK lawyer $1m to open a London office with San Francisco firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe emerging as the most likely source. At £620,000, the salary is the second highest offered in the UK, after the £700,000 offered by Chadbourne & Parke […]
FOX & Gibbons’ Turkish office has faced claims it paid bribes to the local authorities after they discovered it was running a bogus tax account. The claims were made by Paul Cadney, the counsel for former Fox & Gibbons solicitor Ian Philliskirk, at Cardiff Industrial tribunal last week. However, it was not necessary for him […]
Firms pulled in a record £400m in legal fees for corporate merger advice last year, according to Acquisitions Monthly magazine and there is no sign of a down-turn yet. Advising on the £9.8bn merger of Guinness with Grand Metropolitan to form Diageo ensured that Slaughter and May, Theodore Goddard, Norton Rose and SJ Berwin & […]
The Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, signed a bilateral agreement with Trinidad and Tobago on 5 January designed to tackle international crime. The UK-Trinidad Bilateral Assets Confiscation Agreement enables each country to trace, freeze and confiscate the proceeds of serious crime on behalf of the other. Lord Irvine was in the Caribbean attending the bi-annual Conference […]
THE Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has publicly admitted it may send lesser- qualified prosecuting barristers into battle against more experienced defence counsel. In a statement issued last week, the CPS acknowledges concern that suitably experienced prosecuting counsel are rejecting briefs because of low fees ‘leaving the CPS little option but to instruct less experienced counsel’. […]
Brussels firm Huysman & Partners has changed its mind about an alliance with Osborne Clarke, after the Bristol firm withdrew from the UK Legal Resources Group (LRG) an alliance of UK firms which share a Brussels office. Osborne Clarke managing partner Leslie Perrin told The Lawyer last November that his firm had established a Brussels […]
The Law Society is mounting an all-out campaign against proposed changes in the taxation of professional businesses. The Inland Revenue has announced its intention to tax professional partnerships on work as it is done rather than when payments are received. This means partners will have to pay a one-off ‘catch-up’ payment, which could be as […]