17 March 2003
The Lawyer
A&O cashes in on extra £6m as Marconi fees spiral
Allen & Overy (A&O) could be in line for an additional £6m in fees for its role on the complex restructuring of Marconi, on top of the estimated £25m the firm is expected to gain from the deal.Details from Marconi’s draft scheme of arrangement, published today (18 March), show that as well as the total £77.8m the company will pay out to advisers for the cost of the restructure, there will be an additional £17.8m up for grabs related to the ongoing ...
A&O pair joins Loyens for Luxembourg launch
Benelux corporate and tax firm Loyens & Loeff has appointed two Allen & Overy assistants to launch a new Luxembourg practice with former Arendt & Medernach partner Jean-Pierre Winandy. The firm's Belgian legal arm, Loyens Advocaten-Avocats, has formed a partnership with Winandy, which will operate under the name of Loyens Winandy. First revealed on www.thelawyer.com/ lawyernews on 12 March
A&O's multi-creditor work gives TXU administrator KPMG a headache
Allen & Overy's (A&O) decision to take on work from multiple competing creditors and the joint administrator of TXU Europe KPMG, has greatly stalled the collapsed energy company's administration, according to sources close to the process
Bahamas gives green light to controversial investment vehicles
A controversial Bahamian draft bill is likely to lead to the introduction of investment foundations, the vehicles sometimes associated with fraudsters such as Robert Maxwell.For years Liechtenstein has borne the brunt of international concerns over these foundations, which many believe are not audited properly and not transparent because they do not have to disclose the identities of beneficiaries. However, the Bahamas, which wants to replace existing investment trusts with foundations, ...
Bar Council awaits 'real' solicitor ruling
The Court of Appeal will today reveal whether the Bar Council has to pay substantial libel damages to a solicitor after mistakenly telling barristers that he was not qualified
Bar Council escapes £50,000 damages bill
The Bar Council has escaped paying libel damages to a solicitor after mistakenly telling its 10,000 members that he was not qualified. Last year Robert Kearns, the senior partner of Swansea based Kearns & Co, sued the Bar Council after its head of professional conduct Mark Stobbs wrote to barristers telling them Kearns’ related company Kearns Agency was not a law firm. The Court of Appeal ruled today (17 March) that the Bar Council had a qualified privilege defence ...
Big ideas
Following a period of aggressive expansion via numerous acquisitions, insurance outsourcer Rubicon is also trying to cut its legal costs. Husnara Begum investigates
Blake Lapthorn joins with Linnells for Oxford assault
Blake Lapthorn is making a bid to challenge the Oxford branches of Morgan Cole and Manches by merging with local firm Linnells
Cannes you dig it?
When Tulkinghorn heard a couple of partners discussing 'heavy petting' down at Mipim last week, he could only assume it was in relation to the next big Cannes event - the porn festival. But he couldn't have been more wrong. The subject of discussion was actually a group of Pinsent Curtis Biddle lawyers - a pop group, that is. Apparently Heavy Petting, The Booze Band from DLA and Hot Property, a group that includes two further Pinsents lawyers, all got together last week ...
CC acts for Wang estate administrators
Clifford Chance has successfully tendered to act for the joint administrators that control the estate of one of the world's largest property empires
CC asset finance team reunites at DWS
Denton Wilde Sapte (DWS) has boosted its asset finance group with the appointment of new partner Serge Sergiou, an aircraft and rail specialist from Clifford Chance.The appointment sees Sergiou, previously a senior associate, reunited with three of his former Clifford Chance team, including Nick Chandler, who now heads the DWS asset finance team, Paul Holland and Brett Hailey. Sergiou was ...
CC puts off partnership retreat over war fears
Clifford Chance has put its plans for a firmwide partnership retreat on hold because of security worries related to the pending war with Iraq
Charles Russell slashes 19 in staffing review
Charles Russell has made eight lawyers and eleven other staff redundant across its three offices in London, Guildford and Cheltenham. No associates, the grade above assistant at the firm, or partners have been affected. See next Monday’s issue of The Lawyer for more details.
Choosing sides
The Lawyer's survey of outsourcing companies' in-house lawyers showed that conflicts of interest were not most firms' top priority. Steve Hoare asks: is it best to choose between customers and suppliers, or to have your finger in both pies?
Clifford Chance sea dog quits after thirty years
Tony Vlasto, who for years has been the face of shipping at Clifford Chance and who is regarded as one of the finest maritime litigators of his generation, will retire from the firm in June
Commercial Bar taken to task as judges call for faster court orders
Two senior judges of the Commercial Court have slammed the Bar for causing delays in the judicial process
Committee slams Simpson Thacher over Global Crossing
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has been strongly criticised in a report on the collapse of Global Crossing, a former client of the white shoe firm
Corporate deals round-up
CMS Cameron McKenna (Guy Billington) advised Avenue Acquisition on its offer for thread-makers Coats for £414m. Coats advised by Slaughter and May.Lawrence Graham (Hugh Maule) acted for electronic payment processor ...
De Brauw fights Corus's UK corner
Independent Netherlands firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek has sided with the UK management of beleaguered steel maker Corus in the unprecedented battle with its Dutch subsidiary
DEAL OF THE WEEK - ODEON
Linklaters scoops private equity coup with Tchenguiz's acquisition of Odeon
DJ Freeman split creates jobseekers
At least three DJ Freeman partners and a small number of other property and media fee-earners have yet to find homes, following the firm's shock announcement last week that it was splitting in two
DJ Freeman: the end of the road
On 30 April, DJ Freeman will shut its doors for the last time
DLA claims Camerons redundancies can make profit in Hong Kong
Twenty of the CMS Cameron McKenna lawyers who lost their jobs following the announcement of the Hong Kong office’s closure have found a new home at DLA.The team joining DLA boasts six partners – including managing partner of the Hong Kong office Chris Clarke and fellow equity partner Janine Canham – plus 13 other fee-earners.Although Camerons decided there were limited opportunities ...
Druces faces £10m High Court negligence claim
Eden Project co-founder Jonathan Ball, who is suing Druces & Attlee for negligence, has slapped a £10m figure on his damages claim
Dublin up
City lawyers could do with taking a leaf out of Irish law firms' books when it comes to having a good time. Matheson Ormsby Prentice really rolled out the welcome mat at the recent Ireland v France match at Lansdowne Road. The day started well, especially given the firm's choice of driver, who looked like a cross between Michael Caine and Jerry Springer. Well, that's what Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, a regular client of the chauffeur service, says. If anything, Mathesons' ...
Eversheds picks new London real estate head
Eversheds has appointed William Naunton (left) as head of real estate in the London office, a role previously earmarked for Adrian Bland, formerly senior partner in Birmingham but who has now quit the firm for Wragge & Co. Naunton, a real estate investment specialist, will replace Linda Harrison, who is stepping down ...
Finers faces £300K action for negligence
Finers (now Finers Stephens Innocent) is being sued for up to £300,000 for advice it provided to property developer Neonhall in the late 1990s
First Title adds KSB Law to adviser panel
UK title insurer First Title has appointed KSB Law to its panel of regular advisers. The firm joins Halliwell Landau, Hobson Audley and Mills & Reeve on the English panel. Boyds and MacRoberts carry out Scottish work for the organisation. The specialist insurance referral panel handles bulk due diligence work for the title insurer.
Fraud set born from 4KBW seeks image overhaul
The new specialist fraud set launching on 1 April from members of Robert Rhodes QC’s 4 King’s Bench Walk (4KBW) will abandon the traditional practice of having a chambers head in a bid to create a more corporate, less stuffy image.Based in Clerkenwell, the new set will be called Lombard Chambers and will comprise all the biggest earners of 4KBW except Rhodes, who will remain with 4KBW until it dissolves at the end of April. The most senior member is Raymond Walker QC, ...
Freshfields cultivates Roche relationship with funding deal
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has scooped its first capital markets deal for Roche as the Swiss drugs company overhauls its funding strategy. The win builds on what was historically an antitrust relationship between Roche and Freshfields' first German merger partner Deringer.The Roche instruction is a major coup for Freshfields. Allen & Overy is understood to ...
Freshfields, Goodbodys in £15m Eircom sweep
Magic circle firm in fee bonanza; £9m bill on Eircom and £11m on Carnival
Hammonds corporate duo quit for Browne Jacobson
Hammonds' Birmingham office has lost two more corporate partners less than two months after Katie Silvester and Paul Cliff left the firm to join rival Gateley Wareing
Hard on software
As software assets increase in value so too do the checks that must be done on their legitimacy. Chris Oldknow reports
Herbert Smith picked for Virgin/T-Mobile battle
Virgin has chosen Herbert Smith to fight its corner in its ongoing spat with T-Mobile over the ownership of their Virgin Mobile joint venture. The decision has sidelined Ashurst Morris Crisp, which acted for Virgin on drawing up the original joint venture.Virgin beauty paraded Ashursts and Herbert Smith alongside fellow panel firm Allen & Overy, which lost out at an early stage due to a ...
IBA calls for Mugabe prosecution
The International Bar Association (IBA) is urging the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and try Robert Mugabe for crimes against humanity, including murder, torture and inhumane acts
Jones Day duo joins Paul Hastings
Jones Day Gouldens' Washington office has lost two high-profile litigation partners to Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker
Kemp Little, Dechert and Pinsents all bag Rubicon instructions
Dechert, Kemp Little and Pinsent Curtis Biddle have won instructions from the Rubicon Corporation following the insurance outsourcing specialist's decision to expand the spread of its external legal advisers
Kendall Freeman snubs Clydes' merger offer
Clyde & Co is leaving the door open to a possible merger with newly formed firm Kendall Freeman, despite the insurance and litigation boutique vowing that merger is not on the cards.DJ Freeman’s insurance and litigation partners, soon to be known as Kendall Freeman, were in negotiations with Clydes at the same time as the property and media groups were talking to Olswang. Clydes are understood ...
Kirkland & Ellis bills $5m for United restructuring
Kirkland & Ellis is set to rack up more than $5m (£3.1m) in legal fees for seven weeks work on the restructuring of United Airlines, a case which is expected to last for 18 months in total
KLegal's Holt to woo clients as firm rejigs management
KLegal's head of corporate Colin Gray has been appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) as part of a management shake-up that will allow managing partner Nick Holt to handle more client-facing work
Law of the Lander
As Nabarros' Geoffrey Lander prepares to leave his home of thirty years, Emma Vere-Jones finds out why he is launching a property outsourcing company
Lee Crowder hires Pinsents property partner
Pinsent Curtis Biddle property partner Jon Austin has been appointed the new head of Lee Crowder's property department. Austin, who is due to join Lee Crowder on 1 May, will replace current property head Kevin Nagle, who ceased being a partner at the firm on 31 January. Nagle is retiring from the firm, but will stay on as a consultant until April 2004.
Legal Widow
Because she is too young to go on marches, Subjudice is registering her opposition to any forthcoming war by engaging in civil disobedience
Linklaters and Sullivan left out in cold by Soc Gen cuts
Linklaters and Sullivan & Cromwell are the biggest casualties as Société Générale streamlines its legal panel, The Lawyer can reveal
Lovells ditches Washington and falls out with Spanish best friend
Lovells is shaking up its international strategy and is set to close its Washington DC office and hunt for a new merger partner in Spain
McDermotts takes over West Coast biotech specialist
McDermott Will & Emery has taken over West Coast-based Campbell & Flores, adding 10 lawyers specialising in biotechnology intellectual property.Dr Cathryn Campbell and Mauricio Flores, who co-founded Campbell & Flores in 1992, are joining McDermott’s San Diego and Orange County offices. Campbell will lead the firm’s life sciences intellectual property practice group. Flores and David Beckwith will also join the firm as partners and will bring seven ...
Milbank pays out to Enron debtors
Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy has repaid $216,000 (£134,500) to Enron debtors after court-appointed examiner Neal Batson found that the payment could be regarded as a preferential transfer
Mind the sap
Tulkinghorn has never started a conversation with an attractive lady on the Tube but it seems some beautiful girls don't mind this at all. At least they don't when approached by celebrity solicitor Henri Brandman.While recently travelling back from court on the Victoria Line, Brandman found himself sitting next to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.Brandman was so amazed by her radiance he plucked up the courage to speak to the attractive stranger.
Norton Rose Bahrain chief vows to stay in the country
Staff from Baker & McKenzie and Norton Rose are staying in Bahrain despite warnings from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to evacuate all British nationals except for those whose "presence is essential".The FCO has itself reduced its Bahrain Embassy staff to core level, which will seriously restrict consular services. Yesterday (Monday 17 March) the FCO also advised British nationals ...
Olswang planning chief quits ahead of DJ Freeman deal
Olswang head of planning Richard Max is leaving to set up his own firm, opening the door for DJ Freeman’s head of planning Karen Howard to take over the reins.Ironically, Max is a former DJ Freeman partner, although it is understood that his decision was made before the announcement of Howard’s imminent arrival at Olswang.Max will leave the group at the end of April, when the DJ Freeman ...
Opinion
Mention the words 'housing finance' to most people in the legal profession and their thoughts will turn to either their own, normally painful, experiences of buying or selling a house or their professional involvement in a structured property finance transaction for a developer of the latest designer loft-style apartments
Oppenheimer to accept bids for Palo Alto office
Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly's highly unusual move to auction off its entire Palo Alto office will leave the new owner saddled with dotcom boom rent rates as San Francisco property prices continue to plunge
Radcliffes loses second partner in three months
RadcliffesLeBrasseur has lost its top charities partner Jean Dollimore to Hempsons in the second high-profile resignation from the Westminster firm in the past three months. The departure of Dollimore, co-head of the firm's charities group, follows that of Clara Trouson, the firm's head of private client and tax, to Wilson
Schilling settles claim with ex-partner
Keith Schilling, senior partner of Nicole Kidman's law firm Schillings, has settled a seven-year fight over money with a former partner
Set profile: 3 stone buildings
With celebrity status and a NY office, 3 Stone Buildings has hit the big time
Shaw Pittman wins RSA as client
US firm Shaw Pittman has scooped its first instructions from Royal & SunAlliance (RSA) on a £300m business process outsourcing (BPO) deal, the largest ever outsourcing agreement in the UK life and pensions market
Spy game
An internal investigation can be a good way to avoid that headline-grabbing scandal, but you should leave it to the experts. Steven Francis and Rakhi Talwar give ten tips on what to do
Taylors scores long-awaited Lords CFA victory
Last week, textiles company Designers Guild and its law firm Blackburn-based Taylors finally had a conditional fee arrangement (CFA) upheld in the House of Lords. The Clerk of Parliaments - the Lords' equivalent of a costs judge - ruled in February 2002 that Designers Guild, which had won a copyright infringement case in the Lords, could not recoup costs because the CFA was invalid. This is because, at that point, the House of Lords had not introduced procedures to handle it. First ...
The Competition Commission and the Simmons maverick
As Peter Freeman becomes deputy chair of the commission, Helen Power asks what's in store for him
The Leader Column
To you and me, a silo usually means something big in a field in Norfolk. But to managing partners - usually the ones who've gone on that Law Firm Management for Softies course run by Harvard Business School - silos are a Bad Thing, unlike synergy, which is a Good Thing. You see, gentle reader, those Boston chaps tell us that a silo is what happens when a group or department doesn't integrate with the rest of the firm. Silos have to be broken down.DJ Freeman managing ...
The story so far
Last week, The Lawyer reported that Hale and Dorr had launched an astonishing law suit against a former secretary demanding the repayment of £750. The claim is understood to have been signed personally by Joe Pillman, the new head of Hale and Dorr's European offices. The papers were served by the Oxford office of the firm, formerly known as Brobeck Hale and Dorr, on the former secretary after she was mistakenly overpaid. She left the firm in December after a period of sick ...
Trowers in £1.4bn Glasgow housing transfer
Trowers & Hamlins has bagged work on two massive housing transfers, including a £1.4bn transfer by Glasgow City Council, the largest to date in Europe.The Scottish deal saw Trowers advising the Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) on the acquisition of Glasgow City Council's entire 81,000-unit housing stock, which completed this week.The firm was initially instructed in spring 2000, when Trowers' senior partner Jonathan Adlington was called to ...
Trowers ups alert in Bahrain ahead of war
Trowers & Hamlins has placed its Bahrain office on near full alert in response to the escalation of tension in the region.The office is now on level four alert, giving staff the option to leave if they wish. At level five, the highest level, all but a skeleton staff must leave and those who remain can only do so on a voluntary basis.Trowers increased its level of alert today (Tuesday 18 March) from level one in response to Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) warnings ...
TXU: A&O's Chinese wall protocol stalled by own client
Allen & Overy’s (A&O) attempts to get the Commercial Court to rubber-stamp its decision to act for a number of competing creditors on the TXU Europe administration have been scuppered by one of its own clients. A&O is acting for TXU joint administrator KPMG, TXU’s banks, TXU power company creditor Barking and the bankers for energy creditor AES Drax. A Commercial Court hearing was planned for 18 March, where A&O planned to ask the court to approve ...
UK High Court judge appointed to ICC
UK High Court judge Sir Adrian Fulford QC was among 18 judges sworn in last week to serve on the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), which will sit at The Hague in the Netherlands
Unsafe haven
Guernsey has sometimes been seen as a haven for criminals who want to hide their ill-gotten gains, but the island has clamped down. John Greenfield discusses how
Wall Street elite in fresh raids on Linklaters, A&O
Shearman to hire Linklaters M&A star Peter King; Davis Polk lands first UK partner with A&O's Segal
Watson Burton wins Ballast work
Watson Burton has scored construction company Ballast as a new client. The firm will act for Ballast in the North East, mainly through its construction department, on contracts, joint ventures and providing financial advice and contract support on development work. Ballast is involved in a number of projects in the North East, including new developments at Dalton Park, Whitley Bay High ...
White & Case pulls in sixth Brobeck partner
White & Case has hired Brobeck Phleger & Harrison M&A partner Mark Lewis Mandel to bulk up its New York corporate practice. Last month, White & Case added Brobeck partners Kevin Fisher, William Harvey, Douglas Young and David Dedyo to its San Francisco office, while Maria Plum joined its Los Angeles group. First revealed on www.thelawyer.com/lawyernews on 12 March
Wragges media chief defects to Mishcons
Wragge & Co's head of media and entertainment Conan Chitham-Mosley has quit to join the intellectual property, media and IT team of Mishcon de Reya. Chitham-Mosley, who is currently a senior associate, will be promoted to partner when he moves. His clients include Campus Media, Classic Gold Digital, DigiZone, ...
