Online August 2015

Hausfeld launches in Berlin with €30m litigation pot from Burford Capital

Hausfeld will become the latest US firm to open in Germany following a €30m (£21.6m) investment from litigation funder Burford Capital. Burford will put up the multi-million pound pot to fund a raft of German claims for the firm with a focus on competition litigation. [continued] In other German news, Clifford Chance has moved to […]

Edinburgh

Forty redundant as carve up of McClure Naismith gets underway

A total of 42 partners and staff of failed firm McClure Naismith have been left with no jobs to go to after the firm’s administrators worked to secure positions for the majority of the firm. The Scottish firm appointed FRP Advisory partners Tom MacLennan and Iain Fraser as joint administrators on Friday evening (28 August), […]

Jonathon Manning

The week’s top 15 legal briefings – 30 August 2015

Ashley Madison is continuing to fill the pages of newspapers across the world after 25 gigabytes of customer details were stolen from the infidelity data website. This particular hack has been so well covered due to the morally ambiguous nature of its business but data breaches happen often within the business world and frequently lead […]

Scottish flag
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Scotland’s McClure Naismith finally calls in administrators

Scottish firm McClure Naismith has appointed administrators after several years of tumbling revenues meant it was no longer able to service its debt or other liabilities. McClures, which failed to file its LLP accounts for the 2013/14 financial year, has appointed FRP Advisory partners Tom MacLennan and Iain Fraser as joint administrators a week after […]

Gibson Dunn’s Geffen: US firms at point of no return

Former Ashurst head Charlie Geffen oozes confidence about the prospects for building his City corporate finance team. Earlier this month Gibson Dunn & Crutcher’s nascent but star-studded London-based English law corporate team represented William Hill on the betting company’s acquisition of a chunk of online lottery software business NeoGames. This was barely a £20m deal, […]

Oil rig

Freshfields and Pinsents team up with Scottish firms for Total’s North Sea sale

Pinsent Masons has advised energy company Total, as it sold £585m worth of North Sea midstream assets to North Sea Midstream Partners (NSMP), represented by Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Shepherd & Wedderburn.  Total turned to Pinsent Masons partner Rosalie Chadwick, who was supported by senior associate Caroline Orr, energy partner Paul McGoldrick and tax legal […]

money

UK 200 series launches with new real estate-focused report

On 14 September the first-ever UK 200 real estate report will be published, a groundbreaking research project that forms the first part of this year’s new UK 200 series. For the first time this year The Lawyer is breaking down the UK 200 into a series of reports, each specifically tailored to either a data […]

No5’s Richards for Staffordshire County Council in A50 growth corridor case

The Secretary of State for Transport has confirmed compulsory purchase, side roads and slip roads orders in order to upgrade the A50 junction west of Uttoxeter. Hugh Richards acted for Staffordshire County Council, which was promoting the orders under an agency agreement with Highways England. The Secretary of State for Transport has confirmed compulsory purchase, […]

Conyers advises Northern Offshore on acquisition by Shandong Offshore Company

The Company and Shandong Offshore International Company Ltd (the ‘Parent’) made an agreement on the terms of a recommended cash acquisition of the company by the acquirer, a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent (the ‘acquisition’). The acquisition was implemented by way of an amalgamation (the ‘Amalgamation’) under Bermuda law at an acquisition price of […]

Tim Bratton

Top 10 stories: 21-27 August 2015

The key trends of the moment – agile working, contract lawyers and consolidation – all feature in the top 10 stories of the past week. Our summer debate series looking at the future of the profession continued last week as LOD’s practice development director and former Financial Times general counsel Tim Bratton weighed in with the […]