Global coverage

Jo Nayler

Ki Insurance recruits new GC

The general counsel at Crown Agents Bank has moved to Ki Insurance after just five months. Joanna Nayler made the move from the cross-border payments and FX services provider to become GC and compliance director at the insurance firm as of March 2024. Ki Insurance is a digital insurance company, driven by algorithmically powered underwriting. […]

TLT targets 50 per cent female partnership by 2029

TLT has announced its latest goal as part of its diversity and inclusion strategy, aiming for female lawyers to make up half of its partnership in five years time. Since the introduction of its strategy in 2019, TLT has built its Women’s Equality Network (WEN) to action plans around the improving equality, D&I and wellness […]

parental leave

Lewis Silkin matches Ashurst with 26-week parental leave policy

Lewis Silkin has become the latest firm to introduce a parental leave policy that enables staff to take 26 weeks off at full pay. The new system means that all parents, regardless of gender identity, can take up to 52 weeks’ leave with 26 weeks at full pay. This matches policies already introduced by Ashurst, […]

Ashurst

Ashurst snaps up Dechert white collar crime partner

Ashurst has hired a white collar crime and investigations partner from Dechert, as the firm builds out its disputes and investigations offering as part of its firmwide strategy.  Making the move is Judith Seddon, who has been at Dechert for two years and was formerly at Ropes & Gray and Clifford Chance. She specialises in […]

New York

Freshfields doubles down on PE with Latham hires

Two Latham & Watkins partners are joining Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s New York office, tasked with building out the magic circle firm’s transactional private equity offering. Neal Reenan and Ian Bushner are the two partners making the move from Latham to Freshfields. While Freshfields has been working on private equity deals for its European and US […]

Net zero

National Grid launches tender for multimillion-pound net zero panel

British utility company National Grid has kicked off a major tender for legal services as it looks to create a dedicated net zero panel worth £250m. Law firms appointed to the roster will support National Grid with its business ambitions and net zero projects for the next eight years. The panel spots have been separated […]

Lexington Avenue

Merger moves: A&O and Shearman reveal New York and London office plans

Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling have set out plans concerning the integration of staff in New York and London, its two largest offices worldwide. The Lawyer can confirm that A&O’s New York staff will move into Shearman’s building in the Big Apple, while A&O’s London office will take on Shearman’s City team. In […]

ladder

BCLP bolsters London office with nine promotions

Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (BCLP) has made up 24 partners in its latest global promotions round, with 38 per cent (nine) of the cohort having been made up in London. Effective from 1 January 2024, the new partners in the City are Daniel Burnaud, Janany Kathirgamanathan, James Parker and Benedict West in real estate, and […]

Holland Amsterdam

A&O Shearman will be a European kingmaker

The Dutch legal market is uber conservative; it has witnessed little by way of disruption to force the kind of sweeping changes seen here in London. Amsterdam is not the city where firms can rack up mega fees; big-ticket M&A work is not done there as often as it is here. That said, if you’ve […]

Hiring surge ahead as Euro firms double down in London

A raft of Europe’s elite law firms are set to increase their lawyer headcount and office space in London as they sense greater opportunity in the capital than ever before. Research undertaken by The Lawyer for an upcoming report on the International Signal channel found that around one-third (11) of European 100 law firms with […]

Sydney Australia

Pogust Goodhead launches Aussie office in mining giant’s “backyard”

Pogust Goodhead has launched an office in Sydney with a warning to Australian corporations that the firm is “ready to hold them to account”. The claimant law firm, which specialises in social and environmental mass claims, has hired Sydney litigation boutique Crichton & Co’s two partners, Amie Crichton and Joshua Carton. It is also looking […]

ASOS GC joins Asia-Pacific travel platform

Online reservation provider Agoda has hired Asos’s former legal chief Anna Suchopar as its general counsel. Suchopar has made the move from ASOS, where she held the role of general counsel and company secretary from 2019. She will take over from Tom Thomas and the new role is based in Bangkok. She will report into […]

Singapore is essential to any India strategy

There was some significant Indian market news this week from Linklaters. It named Singapore-based capital markets partner Amit Singh as its new India chief, replacing London-based Narayan Iyer. Singh, who arrived as a lateral from magic circle rival Allen & Overy in 2018, is already the head of the capital markets practice in South and […]

Hong Kong

Winston & Strawn to close Hong Kong office

Winston & Strawn is the latest firm preparing to close its office in Hong Kong, though its joint venture in the region will continue. The Lawyer understands the office will close after Chinese New Year. The firm has nine lawyers in Hong Kong, with four of them being partners. The firm will continue to operate […]

Environment, climate change

Linklaters reveals cyclone shutdown in debut climate risk report

Linklaters has opened up about a cyclone that forced its Hong Kong office to shut down for a day, as it becomes the first magic circle firm to publish its climate-related financial disclosure report. As of 6 April 2022, limited liability partnerships must now provide a climate-related financial disclosures report within their annual report on […]

Perth Australia

A&O swipes two more cyber partners from Norton Rose

Expansion of Allen & Overy’s cybersecurity team continues beyond London with the hire of two Norton Rose Fulbright partners in Australia. Anna Gamvros and Ross Phillipson are moving to A&O, which currently has offices in Perth and Sydney. Gamvros leaves Norton Rose having headed the firm’s information governance, privacy and cybersecurity practice for the Asia […]

Linklaters

Linklaters cuts 30 roles due to “prolonged downturn”

Linklaters has kicked off a redundancy round due to the economic slowdown in China, axing 30 roles across its three offices in the region. The Lawyer understands that the affected lawyers sit within the equity and debt capital markets, corporate and banking teams across the firm’s Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong offices. A spokesperson for […]

DACB swoops for Ince’s Singapore alliance firm

DAC Beachcroft has formed an association with an independent Singapore firm that had previously worked in tandem with Ince’s international network. DACB has teamed up with Incisive Law, a local firm that was known up until earlier this year as Ince Singapore. Incisive Law had been allied with Ince since 2011, but it cut ties […]

Hong Kong

Dentons Dacheng was always doomed

Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin’, is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep. Kenny Rogers’ appreciation of the subtleties of risk works as a helpful way into this Horizon. Dentons’ very public divorce from its Chinese arm Dacheng was conveyed to clients this week following long internal deliberations and some […]

Dentons

Dentons loses “Holy Grail” with China split-off

Dentons has announced it will be breaking away from China’s Dacheng, eight years after entering a market that made it the world’s largest law firm by headcount. Clients were informed about the decision in an email on Monday (7 August) with the Chinese government’s new regulations around data privacy and cyber security cited as among […]

The latest Europe briefings

Protecting reputation in the spotlight of an investigation

Global business is increasingly familiar with the prospect of short-notice public investigatory attention, whether from regulators, law enforcement, political forces or as a consequence of sanctions, and this can – in in some cases – devastate individual and corporate reputation.

Protecting reputation in the spotlight of an investigation

Despite the fact that the threat of an investigation alone can be enough to paralyse a business, early warning signs are often missed and businesses can mistake an investigation risk for a reputation risk. Those who handle serious issues well are able to triage the issue at an early stage and identify its potential impact, […]

Bill 64 marks a new direction in Quebec privacy law — Key takeaways for businesses

On September 22, 2021, the Quebec government adopted Bill 64, An Act to modernize legislative provisions as regards the protection of personal information, enacting significant changes to the requirements governing the use and protection of personal information under various statutes, including notably the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector and the Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information.

Incentivising staff in a green economy: green benefits

Environmental, social and governance factors (ESG) alongside sustainability are hot topics in business right now. Employees are increasingly scrutinising what employers are doing to promote sustainability, not least in the benefits they offer.