Allen & Overy (A&O) and Dechert have consolidated their reputations in public-to-private property work by advising the borrower and lenders in the recommended £477m bid for BPT. BPT is the UK’s largest-quoted owner of tenanted residential property in the private sector. It effectively announced that it would quit the stock market last June, by saying […]
After battling with the after-effects of the Martinez and the Cat Corner and the Cat Corner night club, it is time for more than 15,000 property professionals to assess their Mipim strategy. Boardrooms will reverberate with that all-important word – marketing. But between you and me, what they’re really talking about is selling. This year […]
This is the first deal the London office of White & Case has closed for CIBC World Markets. Head of bank finance Maurice Allen scooped the deal through existing relationships with individuals in the bank’s leveraged finance group. Executive director of leveraged finance Europe at CIBC Jonathan Rowland, who used to be at Barclays, had […]
Paul Gilbert makes some good points in his article “Resolve to Evolve” (The Lawyer, 26 February), describing an industry whose structure and practices increasingly do not reflect its clients’ demands. Gilbert focuses his attack narrowly on the industry’s charging practices. He contends that the abolition of hourly rates, and with them a charging system based […]
Foot-and-Mouth is forcing the Lawyer to put his hands deep in his pockets for our Easter holiday, something he finds painful at any time of year. With much of Britain out of bounds, the cheap Welsh cottage we’d set our hearts on (well, the Lawyer’s heart was set on it, anyway) has gone to the […]
When Lovells partners met in Brussels for their conference this weekend, let’s hope there was a big round of applause for Chris Grierson. For at the end of last week, Grierson’s team managed to pull off a massive House of Lords victory for Deloitte & Touche in the ongoing battle for compensation from the Bank […]
There’s no getting away from it, Mipim is all about selling. And with 13,000 delegates and many more property professionals joining in for the ride, it’s important to stand out from the crowd. Tulkinghorn was particularly struck by the approach of one foxy participant from South Africa (check out the job title), whereas Lovells took […]
When Brobeck Hale and Dorr raided Morgan Cole’s Thames Valley office to open its Oxford outpost last year, it did not make itself too many friends. Hiring three partners from a regional firm, with whom it had until then worked closely, was seen as dirty tactics, even for a US firm. It became the first […]
They thought they had escaped from it all. But just as the Norton Rose property team got used to the sunshine, they suddenly had to put their legal wit to work at Mipim. “In the world of international law, we are accustomed to dealing quickly and efficiently with unexpected commercial problems, and we’ve just had […]
For those firms, Mipim has become as much a bonding session for international partners as a marketing exercise aimed at the developers, banks and private and institutional investors who descend on Cannes for four days in March. “In a way, it’s the first time they’ve been together,” says Freshfields global head of real estate James […]
Last month, a Government source set the scene for the Office of Fair Trading’s (OFT) report into competition in the professions with some suitably strong words. “They are one of the last bastions of restrictive practices,” the unnamed spokesman thundered to The Times. “They have a choice – introduce these reforms themselves or be reformed.” […]
Law firms have arrived late into the world of advertising. Since legal practices were given the go-ahead to advertise their services in 1994, few have taken the plunge. But a polarising market is forcing lawyers to consider how they are perceived by their clients and potential recruits, and whether they can create corporate brands. Advertising […]