6 May 2002
The Lawyer
'Last in, first out' redundancies on the wane
The days of the 'last in, first out' (Lifo) redundancy selection procedure look as though they are numbered, a new survey published this week revealed
A&O poised to win Guardian iT after SunGard takeover
SJ Berwin is advising debt-laden disaster recovery client Guardian iT on a recommended £56m take-over offer from US counterpart SunGard Data Systems. SunGard, advised by Allen & Overy (A&O), was the successful bidder out of a reported five companies which have been chasing Guardian iT since mid-February.The ...
A&O's Tokyo office gains US law capability
Allen & Overy (A&O) has launched a US law practice in its Toyko office
Ape jape
Tulkinghorn is very envious of comedians. Just how do they remember all those jokes? For the past six months Tulkinghorn has been living off one single gag: "What do you call a Frenchman in sandals? Philippe Flop." Fortunately, for those who work closely with Tulkinghorn and have already heard it six times, he now has a new ancient joke thanks to Kimbles associate Dino Wilkinson. Enjoy.A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display. While he was there, ...
Ashursts scoops job from Kuwaiti giant
City firm beats off seven firms to advise on major petrochemical projects
Ashursts takes up advisory role for Cinven in publishing buyout
Ashurst Morris Crisp is advising Cinven as leader of a consortium of private equity houses in the biggest leveraged buyout this year.The consortium will pay £1.2bn for a 75 per cent stake in the healthcare and business publication of Vivendi Universal Publishing.Cinven is a long-term client and instructs Ashursts and
Blasts from the past
Barely a day goes by without Tulkinghorn hearing of some new fangled marketing initiative to be rolled out of one of the City firms' marketing departments.Herbert Smith's latest idea is to re-enact World War I. Tulkinghorn has heard rumours of mustard gas being brewed in the kitchens and bayonets being sharpened in the client meeting rooms. The reason? Herbert Smith is teaming up with the Stock Exchange to mount a joint production of two World War I plays. Presumably ...
Brobeck axes thirty-five associate positions
Brobeck Phleger & Harrison has ditched 35 associates in its third round of staff cuts since November
Buchanan London chief joins mass exodus with defection to Theodores
Buchanan Ingersoll's managing partner in London Kier Barrie has become the latest partner to leave the US firm
Charles Russell makes up three
Charles Russell has promoted three lawyers to partners
Cobbetts reaches turnover target
Cobbetts has hit its turnover target for 2001-2002, despite investing heavily in the merger with Leeds firm Read Hind Stewart in the second half of the financial year
Covington's SEC hire boosts securities
Covington & Burling has recruited the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) director of corporate finance to head up its securities practice
Crédit Lyonnais hires new legal affairs head
Crédit Lyonnais is to take on Jean-Baptiste de Cabanes as its new head of legal affairs
Daddy sucks
The glare of publicity can often be a heavy cross to bear, as Tulkinghorn himself is only too aware. Special sympathy should therefore go to Allen & Overy's head of property Adam Cleal, who featured in a recent story about the launch of the firm's new German real estate group.Somewhat chuffed with the piece, Cleal took a copy of The Lawyer home to show his children. But instead of a chorus of "well done Daddy", Cleal's cheeky offspring proceeded to memorise ...
DEAL OF THE WEEK - HINES
Norton Rose scoops Hines' first UK office development
Deals summary
Ashurst Morris Crisp (Jonathan Nabarro) advised BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole d'Ile-de-France and the Royal Bank of Scotland on a e240m (£148.37m) financing of a public-to-private deal relating to Trédi Environnement and initiated by Séché Environnement. Séché advised by Brandford-Griffith ...
Deals summary
CMS Cameron McKenna (Mark Heighton) advised Henderson Investors on the investment purchase of a 75 per cent interest in Romford leisure and retail centre, The Brewery. Vendor Equitable Life advised by Denton Wilde Sapte (Charles Hopkins).
Deals summary
Berwin Leighton Paisner (John Bennett) advised new client Resources Connection on its acquisition of the executive search and selection and interim management business of Ernst & Young in the UK. Tite & Lewis advised Ernst & Young.
Disabling discrimination
The Disability Rights Commission feels the best way to win rights is through conciliation, using litigation as a last resort. But many of those it represents believe the courtroom is the only arena that will give them a fair fight. Who's right?
DLA in double Belgian thrust
DLA is strengthening its Brussels office just months after completing its first full European merger as it takes on the lawyers from Arthur Andersen's Belgian firm Caestecker & Partners
Don't worry, be happy
Tulkinghorn could not help but admire the good-humoured, easygoing nature of his Dutch counterparts when he received an email last week from none other than Linklaters' runaway bride De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek.Remember how the Dutch partners voted in their droves against merging with scary old Linklaters last month? Well, apparently the firm is now preparing a momento of the experience ...
Dorsey links with high-tech specialists Flehr Hohbach
US firm Dorsey & Whitney has merged with Silicon Valley intellectual property (IP) specialists Flehr Hohbach Test Albritton & Herbert
Enron creditors attack Milbank over conflicts
Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy faces a challenge to its role as counsel for the 15-member Enron Corporation creditors' committee
Eversheds' Birmingham insurance practice shuts
Eversheds continues trend for Birmingham closures; work scatters around the UK
Field Fisher wins sole role for GSCC
Field Fisher Waterhouse has been appointed as the sole legal adviser to new regulatory body the General Social Care Council (GSCC)
Firms reveal strategies for World Cup fanatics
Biggest sickie in history predicted; Charles Russell uses 'bacon buttie' strategy; A&O sits on fence
Five-minute smiling
Tulkinghorn has bought himself a treadmill (which he still cannot stand up on while it's in motion) after his bravado got the better of him. You see, Tulkinghorn's friend, Taylor Joynson Garrett partner Martin Winter, was telling him the other day how he ran the Flora London Marathon in under four hours. And, momentarily forgetting his gout, Tulkinghorn boasted to Winter that next year, he will do the Marathon with him (or, at the very least, decree that one of his younger ...
Fixed-term employees regulations
Long ago the land was parched by the hottest summer on record before the advent of global warming
Freshfields launches new German strategy
London corporate head O'Brien moves to Frankfurt in M&A push on the banks
Garretts set to dissolve operations at end of May
Andersen Legal's UK firm Garretts will close for business at the end of this month
GREENWOODS
Greenwoods may be growing, but its focus will always be personal injury
Halliwells hires signal London growth strategy
Manchester-based firm Halliwell Landau has hired two senior partners in London in its drive to build a City presence to rival other national firms
Holland & Knight axes 60 lawyers
170 support staff to go as firm undergoes structural review
Insurance
Law firms and their insurance clients are strange bedfellows. While insurers claim that their lawyers do not work quickly, efficiently and certainly not cheaply enough, lawyers argue that their clients do not understand the vagaries of handling a claim. It is therefore a market with raised eyebrows that monitors the progress of new technology risk insurer Click for Cover and its strategic partner Hammond Suddards Edge.Click is an underwriting agency for a number of Lloyd's of ...
Judicial appointment process gets tough
The Lord Chancellor's Department is dragging the judicial appointments process into the 21st century
Keeping secrets
The Data Protection Act 1998 is likely to have the impact that its predecessor lacked. Michael Ford reports on the new code
Latham makes CSFB lawyer New York partner
Latham & Watkins has hired Credit Suisse First Boston lawyer David Brodsky as a partner in its New York office
Law for art's sake
Hip and trendy Collyer-Bristow has shown that when it comes to the kids, it's the firm to get right down with them.The West End firm's music, entertainment and media team, headed by partner Howard Ricklow, has joined forces with BBC Radio One. Tulkinghorn has heard that Ricklow plays a mean tambourine, but in this instance his team will use its legal skills, rather than its musical skills, to advise musicians on interacting with the record industry. The firm will feature ...
Lawrence Graham takes on Simkins IP specialist
Lawrence Graham has hired soft intellectual property (IP) and digital media specialist Jonathan Sellors as a partner for its commerce and technology group
Legal drive
RAC director of legal services Jonathan Gulliford thinks his organisation is more trusted than most lawyers. Caroline Davies meets the man who wants to take on the Law Society.
Livingstone under fire for excessive legal bills
London Mayor Ken Livingstone is facing criticism after racking up legal costs totalling at least £36,000 from Reading law firm Pitmans for work relating to a permission hearing
Londoners dominate Linklaters leadership
Three super-global heads created; Anglo-Saxons overwhelm executive committee
Lords kills time-bar limitations
The debate of 'to shred or not to shred', sparked by Andersen's role in the Enron debacle and the recent criticisms of lawyers in Australian tobacco litigation, reared its head in a House of Lords case last month
Love departs 2 Paper Buildings for RSPCA
Barrister Mark Love, head of 2 Paper Buildings, is to quit the bar and move in-house as director of legal services at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA)
Lovells on third whole business securitisation with Steam Packet
Lovells is taking on its third whole business securitisation, advising the lead arrangers on a £65m deal backed by the income from the ferry service provided by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company.NM Rothschild & Sons and ABN Amro are joint lead managers on the deal and Lovells won the work through its longstanding relationship with Rothschild. The deal is a coup for the firm as it has not handled a huge amount of work for ABN, and it hopes the deal will strengthen its ...
Max Clifford lambasts Jeffrey Green Russell
PR Max Clifford has hit out at West End firm Jeffrey Green Russell
Memery Crystal disputes £4.3m Citib@se negligence claim
Memery Crystal is facing a hotly-disputed £4.3m negligence claim from office space provider Citib@se over advice it gave relating to a property lease in 1998
On the right tracks
Railtrack chairman Geoffrey Howe has the task of retrieving shareholders' money. It could be worse - he could be running the trains
Opinion
Imagine a world in which an English solicitor is suddenly informed that there is now an international rule that decrees that English solicitors are no longer able to handle client money. A world in which every foreign law firm that obtains a licence to open a new office in China is German or American. A world in which the representative body of the solicitors' profession maintains an empty chair policy at international events. This is what life could be like if the Law Society ...
Paul Hastings merges in China and HK
US firm Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker has secured its first Hong Kong and China presence by merging with local firm Koo and Partners
Pillsbury partner takes up role on Irish Competition Authority
Terry Calvin, a partner from US firm Pillsbury Winthrop, has been appointed to the Irish Competition Authority
Pinsents saves Garretts' Birmingham partners
Pinsent Curtis Biddle has rescued the Birmingham practice of Andersen Legal firm Garretts
Plymouth Council's legal chief quits for Bevan Ashford
Plymouth City Council's head of legal has joined Bevan Ashford as the firm ramps up its commitment to public sector work
Power to the people
Europe's ongoing economic drive has seen the most recent developments in employment law indicate a shift in legislation in favour of employees. Donna Moxham investigates
Reuters appoints new head of legal in international internal restructure
Reuters has undergone an internal restructuring, resulting in a shifting of the legal roles
Simmons merges with Nolst Trenité
Simmons & Simmons and Rotterdam-based Nolst Trenité formally merged on 1 May
SJ Berwin shakes up management structure
UK and European growth prompts wholesale overhaul of corporate governance
Slaughters' Italian best friend opens new practice in Treviso
Slaughter and May best friend Macchi di Cellere e Gangemi has opened a new office in Treviso, one of the most dynamic areas in northern Italy
Spanish firms trail global competition
UK and US firms are beating Spain's indigenous market leaders hands down in the race for profits
Steins Bisschop poised for action against KPMG
Steins Bisschop Meijburg & Co, the former partner of KPMG's Dutch legal arm, is considering legal action against the big five accountancy firm to regain capital contributions
Stringer Saul appoints new head of litigation
Stringer Saul has appointed Justin Ede (left) as head of its litigation and dispute group
The Employment Bill
Most employers, certainly small employers, will tell you that there is simply too much employment legislation
The Leader Column
It's all the rage, this corporate governance lark. You wait for ages, and then all of a sudden three reviews come along at once. In this issue of The Lawyer we reveal the results of the exercises undertaken by SJ Berwin and Linklaters. (The third, of course, is the
The powers that be
Ellen Temperton reports on the Employment Tribunals Service Annual Report 2000-2001
Trans actions
There can only be real change for transsexuals at work when they are equal in the eyes of the law. Rachel Crasnow reports
UBS reviews global panel to cut costs
UBS Warburg has started an international review of its legal advisers in a bid to cut millions of pounds
US firms in London continue to set high targets and pay mid-Atlantic salaries
The majority of US law firms in London are still paying mid-Atlantic rates to UK lawyers and setting US billing targets for all of their fee-earners
Wedlakes hires new head for its share scheme team
Wedlake Bell has appointed a new head to its share scheme team from Field Fisher Waterhouse-owned company Equity Incentives
Weightmans takes on Reynolds Porter lawyer
Weightman Vizards has recruited its first lateral hire since the merged firm took effect on 1 May
Wragges scores GlaxoSmithKline
Wragge & Co has been appointed to the new GlaxoSmithKline panel as the chemical giant's sole UK adviser for IT and telecoms work
