Alex is The Lawyer’s international editor. He joined in 2017 as a reporter covering litigation and the Bar, leaving in 2019 and returning in 2021.
We’re all watching eagerly for the changes coming at Allen & Overy on 1 May as its merger with Shearman & Sterling finally goes live. But Addleshaws has its own significant change that day. Next Wednesday, Andrew Johnston will officially kick off his tenure as managing partner with longstanding incumbent John Joyce stepping aside. Addleshaws […]
Norway’s Sands has suffered one of the largest mass defections in its history after six partners left to join Big Five firm Wiersholm in Trondheim. The hires bolster Wiersholm in a range of the firm’s key sectors, including marine law, renewables, technology, real estate and tax. The firm has committed to further growth over the […]
Welcome to The Passport, your regular round-up of all the most important stories to come from the European legal market. In this edition, CMS Wistrand recently went live and its drivers were myriad, but one in particular stood out for us; Poland is dangerously underlawyered in one very particular area; and Pinsents has embarked on […]
For one firm, the pan-Nordic dream is dead. For another, it’s just begun. Hannes Snellman’s announcement that its Stockholm and Helsinki offices will be going their separate ways later this year represented the end of a strategic gamble that started 16 years ago. Back then, its leadership bet that opening in Stockholm (2008) and Copenhagen […]
Fieldfisher has launched an office in Milan with a five-partner hire just six months after cutting ties with its partner firm in the country. The firm gained regulatory approval to launch the new office on 4 April, which begins as a 26-lawyer, five-partner operation in northern Italy. All five partners – including country managing partner […]
Reed Smith is opting for 70 per cent open-plan space in its new building, transforming the way the firm’s London office is fitted out when it moves home this summer. The move is in stark contrast to the way the firm currently operates in its Broadgate Tower office, which is majority cellular, reflecting a significant […]
The fate of King & Wood Mallesons’ (KWM) final European office has been decided with the firm’s Madrid partners joining Addleshaw Goddard. KWM’s 13-partner Madrid office will join Addleshaws next month, launching the UK firm’s first office in Spain. The new office will be led by KWM Spain managing partner and corporate/M&A lawyer Roberto Pomares. […]
Kinstellar started the year in fine form. If its acquisition of a Vietnamese firm was a big move for it to break into the Southeast Asian market, the acquisition of four offices from German independent Noerr was positively enormous as a statement of intent. There was also a lovely symmetry to the acquisition as the […]
Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison’s rapid growth in London is now translating to the Continent, as the firm has hired a Simpson Thacher & Bartlett partner to launch an office in Brussels. Simpson Thacher partner Ross Ferguson will join the growing European partner base at Paul Weiss. Jason Glover, London office head at Simpson […]
Welcome to The Passport, your regular round-up of the most important stories to come from the European legal market. In this edition, we have a Kinstellar sandwich on Parisien bread. We look at how August Debouzy’s latest phase of international development is taking shape; a glimpse at arguably Europe’s most expansionist firm’s foray into Southeast […]
Vinge’s Maria-Pia Hope has left the Swedish firm after stepping down as CEO after 12 years in the role. Hope’s final day at the firm was 31 March with her successor, banking and finance partner Louise Brorsson Salomon, stepping into her shoes on 1 April. Having joined the firm in 1996, Hope made partner seven […]
Scandinavian firm Hannes Snellman has finalised the split between its Swedish and Finnish businesses, citing “a divergence of the business strategies…in Helsinki and Stockholm”. The firm announced in February 2024 that the split would take place and the necessary arrangements have taken place splitting the offices into two distinct entities under the Hannes Snellman operating […]