A partner from Mayer Brown’s London office is scheduled to appear before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) later this year over historic allegations related to “know your client” checks. Corporate real estate partner Simon Price is set to appear before the SDT on 11 June for an initial case management hearing. The Lawyer understands that a […]
Litigation firm CANDEY appears before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) this week, alongside former partner Richard Morris, over allegations of anti-money-laundering (AML) failures. The matter regards a £24m deal for a Northumberland country estate in 2015. No actual fraud or money-laundering has been identified. The SRA alleges that the firm and Morris, who left for […]
Clarke Willmott is assessing the environmental footprint of its offices, with the firm collecting information on its staff’s route to work and an expected relocation in Cardiff. The firm is gathering data from its employees to improve the accuracy of emissions data that the firm holds. A survey has been created with the firm’s consultants, […]
Simmons & Simmons represented Barclays Bank in an $150m anti-suit and anti-enforcement injunction against Russian state investment bank, VEB. VEB was founded in 1922 as the first international bank of the USSR, and since 2018 it has been chaired by the country’s former deputy prime minister under Putin, Igor Shuvalov. The bank was represented by […]
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has increased its salary for newly-qualified solicitors (NQs) to £180,000. The US disputes specialist’s other associate salaries will also rise when the move takes effect from June. A 1 PQE associate is set to be paid £195,000, while a 2 PQE associate will be on £220,000. For 6 PQE associates, […]
In this week’s Spotlight, we delve into the often-confusing world of restructuring disputes, to find out how DLA Piper comes to the rescue when a company goes under. The market: While restructuring disputes used to be the remit of clearing banks and the Big Four accounting firms, the market has undergone a huge diversification in […]
Litigation boutique Candey has opened an office in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), marking the firm’s crossover into the offshore legal market. The firm is among a handful of firms that practise both BVI law and English law, with several of its lawyers already able to practise there, including partner Lisa Walmisley and BVI legal […]
Iberian firm Uría Menéndez will close in New York when its Park Avenue lease expires, after more than three decades in the US. The firm runs with a small staff in New York of just three lawyers, led by office managing partner and corporate lawyer José Félix Zaldivar. Uría Menéndez felt its US strategy would […]
Fieldfisher has promoted 10 lawyers to partner in its 2024 promotions round, eight of whom have been made up in London. The London promotions, effective from 1 April, comprise four women. This includes private client lawyer Alice Vink, banking and finance director Anna Crosby, clinical negligence director Helen Thompson and Shaheen Mosquera, who specialises in […]
Four senior in-housers have quit football organisation FIFA over the last couple of months for new general counsel positions. The governance body is now recruiting for the four in-house legal positions, including a new head of commercial partnerships, a head of digital and technology, a senior counsel for esports and digital, and a senior counsel […]
Goodwin Procter has given its Luxembourg office the early moving-in present of a new partner, hiring European 100 firm AKD’s co-head of investment funds. The US firm is bringing in Virginie Leroy to strengthen its European funds practice. Leroy spent more than four years at AKD, having joined from Canadian firm DSL in March 2020. […]
Execution, as one lawyer says, is “easy to plan, but really ***ing hard to do”. That word ‘execution’ will be resting heavily on the minds of Hannes Snellman’s senior leadership. Earlier this year, the firm split in two; Helsinki and Stockholm are going their own ways. It effectively brings to an end one of the […]
Portugal’s Abreu Advogados fell short of hitting the €50m revenue mark for the first time in its history after revenue surged by almost a fifth in last year. The firm’s top-line grew to €49.7m (£42.8m) from the previous year’s €41.7m. Managing partner Inês Sequeira Mendes praised the firm’s growth, but poured cold water on any […]
Welcome to The Passport, your regular round-up of the most important stories to come from the European legal market. In this edition we take a look at the third generation of De Brauw’s private equity group and how domestic and regional firms in Ukraine may look to reshape after the war. De Brauw has entered […]
Bird & Bird has announced it will be opening a new office in Tokyo with the hire of Ashurst partner Hiro Iwamura. The primary purpose of the office will be to support the firm’s Japanese clients in the renewable energy, life sciences and technology space with outbound work across Europe, the Middle East and Asia […]
European giant Kinstellar has gained a foothold in the Southeast Asian legal after securing a joint-venture deal with Vietnamese firm Asia Counsel. Asia Counsel boasts a headcount of just 21 lawyers, including four partners. Its focus has been on assisting foreign multinationals and Vietnamese corporations with expansion, M&A and financial matters. Acting independently for the […]
Pogust Goodhead has launched an office in Sydney with a warning to Australian corporations that the firm is “ready to hold them to account”. The claimant law firm, which specialises in social and environmental mass claims, has hired Sydney litigation boutique Crichton & Co’s two partners, Amie Crichton and Joshua Carton. It is also looking […]
Online reservation provider Agoda has hired Asos’s former legal chief Anna Suchopar as its general counsel. Suchopar has made the move from ASOS, where she held the role of general counsel and company secretary from 2019. She will take over from Tom Thomas and the new role is based in Bangkok. She will report into […]
There was some significant Indian market news this week from Linklaters. It named Singapore-based capital markets partner Amit Singh as its new India chief, replacing London-based Narayan Iyer. Singh, who arrived as a lateral from magic circle rival Allen & Overy in 2018, is already the head of the capital markets practice in South and […]
Winston & Strawn is the latest firm preparing to close its office in Hong Kong, though its joint venture in the region will continue. The Lawyer understands the office will close after Chinese New Year. The firm has nine lawyers in Hong Kong, with four of them being partners. The firm will continue to operate […]
Linklaters has opened up about a cyclone that forced its Hong Kong office to shut down for a day, as it becomes the first magic circle firm to publish its climate-related financial disclosure report. As of 6 April 2022, limited liability partnerships must now provide a climate-related financial disclosures report within their annual report on […]
Expansion of Allen & Overy’s cybersecurity team continues beyond London with the hire of two Norton Rose Fulbright partners in Australia. Anna Gamvros and Ross Phillipson are moving to A&O, which currently has offices in Perth and Sydney. Gamvros leaves Norton Rose having headed the firm’s information governance, privacy and cybersecurity practice for the Asia […]
Linklaters has kicked off a redundancy round due to the economic slowdown in China, axing 30 roles across its three offices in the region. The Lawyer understands that the affected lawyers sit within the equity and debt capital markets, corporate and banking teams across the firm’s Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong offices. A spokesperson for […]
DAC Beachcroft has formed an association with an independent Singapore firm that had previously worked in tandem with Ince’s international network. DACB has teamed up with Incisive Law, a local firm that was known up until earlier this year as Ince Singapore. Incisive Law had been allied with Ince since 2011, but it cut ties […]
The publication of the Rules for Registration and Regulation of Foreign Lawyers and Foreign Law Firms in India 2022 by the Bar Council of India (BCI) in March 2023 – potentially opening up the Indian legal market to foreign lawyers – led to a lot of excited chatter around the legal world. These Rules came […]
Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin’, is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep. Kenny Rogers’ appreciation of the subtleties of risk works as a helpful way into this Horizon. Dentons’ very public divorce from its Chinese arm Dacheng was conveyed to clients this week following long internal deliberations and some […]
Dentons will launch in Uganda through a tie-up with Kampala Associated Advocates.
White & Case is opening an office in Cairo after announcing an association with new Egyptian law firm MHR & Partners.
East Africa’s M&A market has grown in recent years as dealmakers flock to the region to get a slice of growing business and lawyers are starting to follow. A number of multinationals have been making major bids from African nations over the last 18 months.
Places such as London and Singapore are still the main hubs for international arbitration but Nigeria has been attempting to raise its status in the past few years
Increasing profit in the face of protectionism isn’t a bad approach
French firm Gide Loyrette Nouel is set to launch an office in Egypt’s capital city Cairo, its second expansion in the Middle East in four months. Gide’s Cairo office will open in the first quarter of 2018 and the latest expansion is headed by partner Baudouin de Moucheron.
Norton Rose Fulbright TMT partner Dino Wilkinson has joined Clyde & Co to boost firm’s Abu Dhabi office.
DWF’s proposed Saudi launch comes just days after Clifford Chance closed its local office in favour of an alliance. 1 March: DWF opens Dubai office in first overseas expansion 30 June: DWF eyes Europe and Qatar for next launch
DWF is considering opening its first office in Qatar and additional offices across Europe as part of its latest plan to boost its international presence.
Taylor Wessing has boosted its presence in the Middle East after forming an alliance with Saudi Arabia-based Alsulaim Alawaji & Partners Law Firm.
Payne Hicks Beach construction and energy head Julian Critchlow will leave the firm on 1 June to set up his own practice focusing on Middle Eastern and East African legal work. The new firm will be called Al Bawardi Critchlow and is established in association with UAE firm Al Bawardi Advocates. It will be based […]
Central Asian-based Colibri Law has become the second international firm to enter the Iranian legal market after opening its doors in Tehran. The Iran team will focus on corporate work including joint venture agreements, merger control issues, and trade and regulatory issues. The firm is also looking to specialise in advising foreign firms looking to […]
Former GFH Capital general counsel David Haigh has been acquitted in Dubai over charges relating to alleged ‘Twitter abuse’ and will return to the UK.
Vinson & Elkins has become the latest firm to close in Abu Dhabi, with all staff set to relocate to its Dubai office. All staff in Abu Dhabi, including partner Rob Patterson, will move to Dubai from the end of March, with the firm continuing to have offices in both Dubai and Riyadh. The decision […]
White & Case has announced it has established a new association in Saudi Arabia with the Law Firm of AlSalloum and AlToaimi. Earlier this week The Lawyer revealed that White & Case had ended its five-year association with Waleed Al-Nuwaiser. The relationship came to an end in December and although the firm was known to […]
White & Case has ended its Saudi Arabian association with Waleed Al-Nuwaiser after five years. The US firm partnered with Al-Nuwaiser after Latham & Watkins poached its former associated partner Mohammed Al-Sheikh, but the alliance broke down late last year, The Lawyer can reveal. At the time Latham also picked up partner Christopher Langdon and the majority of […]
Global business is increasingly familiar with the prospect of short-notice public investigatory attention, whether from regulators, law enforcement, political forces or as a consequence of sanctions, and this can – in in some cases – devastate individual and corporate reputation.
Despite the fact that the threat of an investigation alone can be enough to paralyse a business, early warning signs are often missed and businesses can mistake an investigation risk for a reputation risk. Those who handle serious issues well are able to triage the issue at an early stage and identify its potential impact, […]
Analysis of recent fines suggests that environmental prosecutions are resulting in more substantial fines, especially for ‘very large organisations’.
On September 22, 2021, the Quebec government adopted Bill 64, An Act to modernize legislative provisions as regards the protection of personal information, enacting significant changes to the requirements governing the use and protection of personal information under various statutes, including notably the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector and the Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information.
The Data Protection Authority in Hungary (Nemzeti Adatvédelmi és Információszabadság Hatóság), recently published its annual report which included details of a fine of €670,000 (HUF 250,000,000) being imposed on a bank. To date, this fine is the highest imposed by the Hungarian Authority.
Environmental, social and governance factors (ESG) alongside sustainability are hot topics in business right now. Employees are increasingly scrutinising what employers are doing to promote sustainability, not least in the benefits they offer.