Mobile Alliance sees CC pick up telecoms work

Clifford Chance has secured a valuable introduction to Orange and Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) by winning instructions from the Mobile Alliance.
The alliance is a partnership between Orange, TIM and existing Clifford Chance clients T-Mobile and Telefonica, which aims to launch a seamless mobile service across Western Europe.
"It will consolidate our relationships with existing clients and, hopefully, build relationships with new ones," said Clifford Chance partner and chairman of the firm's global communications, media and technology group Joachim Fleury.
Düsseldorf partner Joachim Schütze and Madrid-based senior associate Miguel Odriozola originally won the instructions in a pitch for the competition work on the project.
Schütze's relationship with T-Mobile goes back to the pre-merger Pünder days, while Odriozola already had a relationship with Telefonica in Spain.
The competition mandate was quickly expanded to include all corporate, intellectual property and tax issues, which now involves a Clifford Chance team of around 20 lawyers in Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, London, Madrid, Paris and Rome.
The four members of the alliance all signed a cooperation agreement and have announced the launch of a number of services for their European territories, with the eventual aim of rolling these out to their global operations.