Legal & General shake-up: Linklaters edges in on Slaughters’ turf
Linklaters edges in on Slaughters’ turf" />Slaughter and May will have to share its role with Linklaters as principal corporate adviser to Legal & General (L&G) following the completion of a radical review of the FTSE 100 insurance company’s UK law firm panel.
Linklaters has won L&G as a new corporate client after scooping a place on the panel. The appointment is a coup for the magic circle firm as historically Slaughters has had a monopoly over L&G’s big-ticket corporate work.
Last year Slaughters advised L&G on the insurer’s £785.9m deep discount rights issue, the first in the UK for almost 20 years, and on its £2bn euro note issue.
The review, conducted by L&G group head of legal Geoffrey Timms, resulted in the creation of five separate panels: group, UK operations, investment management, real estate, and private equity.
Other firms with places on at least one of the first three panels are understood to include Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), Clyde & Co, Eversheds, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Halliwells, Lawrence Graham, Macfarlanes and niche pensions firm Sacker & Partners.
Simmons & Simmons, which historically has not acted for L&G, has also been appointed to the investment management panel.
Meanwhile, Clifford Chance and Eversheds, the latter historically advising L&G on general commercial, litigation and employment matters, have been added to the real estate panel alongside L&G’s existing property advisers BLP and Lawrence Graham.
It is understood that Ashurst, CMS Cameron McKenna, Macfarlanes, Norton Rose and Taylor Wessing have been retained to advise L&G Ventures on private equity matters.
The panels will be in place for the next three years.
Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Simmons, Slaughters and Taylor Wessing all declined to comment. L&G also declined to comment.
