29 October 2012

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China light

Mention of Chinese outbound investment always gets lawyers excited, so here is The Lawyer’s reality check on dealflow, highlighting Linklaters’ fantastic 2012. Click on image to view larger version Nobel laureate and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz recently praised China’s stellar performance during the global financial crisis. “The emerging markets weathered the 2008 […]

Margaret Taylor
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Women drivers needed

Ever wondered why women are so under-represented in the upper ranks of law firms when so many continue to enter the profession at the junior level? Some of our readers reckon they have the answer. “If they want to make partners they should work and they’ll get made up. There is no magic to it,” […]

High Court

Billionaires and graces

Another bump in the long and winding road to $6bn BTA High Court showdown Next month, another $6bn dispute rolls into town – JSC BTA Bank v Mukhtar Ablyazov – but the tussle already has problems. Last week Ablyazov’s lawyers at Addleshaw Goddard and 20 Essex Street’s Duncan Matthew QC requested that Mr Justice Teare, […]

Open goal

Destination transparency, as Russian bank publishes law panel application results Panel reviews, particularly at the world’s leading banks, are always keenly awaited, highly sought-after and – as many lawyers would admit – often overhyped. Perhaps this is down to the mystique that surrounds most panel revamps, what with the majority of banks refraining from publishing […]

Split decision

Independence may benefit Scottish law firms, but they are not holding their breath What do Scotland’s managing partners think about their nation’s bid for independence? The small clutch The Lawyer polled were almost all against the idea, although one says he does not want to go on the record about it for fear of it […]

Scourge of the external advisers

If in-house cost-cutting king Nick Deeming joins one of your client companies, good luck They called RBS chief Fred Goodwin ‘Fred the Shred’ because of his reputation for ruthless cost-saving, but the world of in-house lawyers seems to have its own version of an expert in fast turnarounds and waste-slashing in the form of Nick […]

Caroline Carter

Employers must act on equality

Tackling equal pay issues before they reach the courts just became an even The gender pay gap is now 15 per cent. Is the Supreme Court’s decision that out-of-time equal pay claims can proceed as breach of contract claims in the High Court a step too far for employers? The ruling goes to the heart […]

Pedro Aguiar de Freitas

From darkness into light

A big corruption case in Brazil is raising the profile of the justice system – and respect for the rule of law The 1980s was a lost decade for Brazil and several other Latin American countries. It was a period of high unemployment, the IMF code of conduct, fiscal austerity, recession and public demonstrations. Sound […]

Roman Khodykin

Russia still stalling on arbitration

Russian decree shows the country’s courts are still broadly biased against arbitration On 2 September the Supreme Arbitrazh Court of the Russian Federation – the highest judicial authority for state commercial courts – made public an important decree in the case of Russian Telephonic Company v Sony-Ericsson Mobile Communications Rus, by which it held that […]

Nick Johnson

Google: the search for privacy

EU challenge to Google over data use begs wider questions as volume of digital information booms In a sector driven by innovation, no chief executive worth his salt would pull the plug on research and development, yet some may argue that is part of what European data protection authorities asked Google’s Larry Page to do […]

Moves: 29 October 2012

Reed Smith’s Hong Kong office has appointed Stephenson Harwood partner Jason Toms to its global shipping group. Move of the Week Toms is a litigation partner with a focus on wet and dry shipping matters. He moved to Hong Kong from London in 1997 with legacy Sinclair Roche & Temperley. He joined Stephenson Harwood’s Hong […]

Simon Beswick
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State of the unions

Losing track of who’s merged with whom in the UK legal market? Our handy guide to the key tie-ups of the past 18 months will help It was a long time prophesied, but until the past couple of years the much-heralded period of rapid consolidation in the UK legal market had shown little sign of […]