An Amazon senior corporate counsel has been appointed head of legal at Health Data Research (HDR) UK to set up its legal function. Cassandra Smith joins HDR UK, the national institute for health data science, as head of legal and member of the executive committee. In the role, she will lead the development of HDR […]
Yorkshire firm Switalskis has bought clinical negligence specialist Pryers Solicitors, the latest in a series of acquisitions by the firm in its home region. Pryers is a York-based firm, founded in 2002 and previously owned by Pure Business Group, which owns a suite of legal brands. Switalskis has acquired it for an undisclosed sum; the […]
Taylor Wessing is advising pharma giant Pfizer on aspects around the rollout of its Covid-19 vaccine across Europe, The Lawyer understands. The firm is understood to be counselling the company on patent issues arising from the unprecedentedly large-scale distribution of the vaccine it developed in conjunction with German biotech company BioNTech. It is understood that […]
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Macfarlanes and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz have spearheaded AstraZeneca’s $39bn (£29.5bn) stock-and-cash acquisition of US biotech Alexion. Cambridge-headquartered AstraZeneca’s acquisition of its US rival comes amid its central role in developing the much-anticipated Covid-19 vaccine with the University of Oxford. Freshfields advised AstraZeneca on both the US and UK legal aspects […]
DWF has won a mandate to provide Covid-19 legal advice to NHS Digital, the information and technology provider for the national healthcare system. A team from the listed firm will be seconded to the public body as part of a £227,000 contract. The team seconded includes Manchester data protection head and partner JP Buckley and […]
Linklaters has hired a corporate partner from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, in a rare magic circle move in Paris. Partner Florent Mazeron has been a corporate partner within its global transactions practice and a member of the global financial investors group for seven years. He focuses on major private equity transactions in relation to both public […]
McDermott Will & Emery has snagged a disputes partner from Paul Hastings, in its latest London hire this year. Simon Airey joins McDermott’s dispute resolution practice after just over three years at Paul Hastings. He joined the US firm in 2017 from DLA Piper. Airey is a corporate crime and investigations partner, who was brought […]
A total of eight lawyers have been promoted to partner at Stephenson Harwood this year. This includes a quartet in the City, with corporate claiming half of the London promotions. Carolyn Hall, a funds specialist, is understood to have trained at the firm, while Hewson advises on a range of outsourcing and data matters. She […]
A former employee of Starling Bank has brought claims of whistleblowing and discrimination against the group, with its general counsel also named as a respondent in the case. Gulnaz Raja, who was deputy secretary to Starling’s board from 2019 to 2020, is taking on the business in the Employment Tribunal a year after leaving. Court […]
Charles Russell Speechlys has finalised an approach to the reopening of its UK offices, as it eyes a wider repopulation in September. The UK firm will gradually reopen the premises during the summer as part of the first phase of the plan. In September, the firm will kick off a six-month pilot to try out […]
Hive Energy has appointed a CMS lawyer as its inaugural general counsel. Alex Lane joins the solar energy business after four years as an associate at CMS. As a property lawyer in the firm, he advised companies in the energy sector in relation to their acquisition of land rights for solar farms, wind farms and […]
White & Case has hired two partners from Shearman & Sterling, as it rebuilds its London ranks following a recent steady flow of defections. The US firm has taken on partners Tim Sheddick and Katie Hicks, who have spent little more than two years at Shearman. Sheddick is a partner in the project development and […]
CMS has made up 52 lawyers to partner worldwide, its largest-ever promotions round. The firm has promoted 52 partners globally, spanning 22 offices of which the UK accounted for 44 per cent of the total. In the UK, 23 new partners were made up. Of the London partners, energy lawyer Dalia Majumder-Russell was a paralegal […]
Associates in the London office of Kirkland & Ellis are seeing expectations around their target hours spike considerably, The Lawyer has learned, as a result of rising workloads. Sources said junior lawyers at the US firm have seen their targets skyrocket. Over the past few months, they have risen from the bonus threshold of 2,000 […]
At the Pharmaceutical Forum of the EAEU and CIS countries held in Moscow in late February 2018, the Director of the Department of Technical Regulation and Accreditation of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEС) said that the full-scale work on registration of medicines using the unified information system of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) will start […]
By Robert Breedon, Tom Gray, Elwin Morgan Africa’s healthcare is in the midst of an innovation revolution that, as PwC say, “…is transforming Africa’s economic potential, creating new target markets and unprecedented consumer choice”. This innovation revolution is powered in part by traditional methods of funding human capital development in areas such as development and […]
