Sidley considers hedging

Sidley Austin Brown & Wood is among a number of US firms exploring the possibility of entering into commercial hedging contracts to protect its partners’ compensation against any future decline in value of the dollar.

A Sidley source said that the firm is in the throes of reviewing how to protect the pay packets of its City-based US partners against the fall in the dollar value against sterling.

One option is to top up partners’ salaries and put it down as a cost to the firm.

Earlier this month, The Lawyer reported that Dewey Ballantine was also looking at ways to address this issue (2 February).