Mishcon de Reya has bolstered its wealth-planning group after raiding West End firm Seddons for a specialist residential real estate team. The firm has hired Ned El-Imad as a partner along with assistants James Liffen, Julie Bond, Ruth McKenzie and Sarah Callaghan. Mishcon said it had witnessed an increased demand for specialist property services from […]
Offshore specialist Appleby has boosted its British Virgin Islands (BVI) offering by recruiting two lawyers to the three-partner practice. Eliot Simpson joins as a partner from Jersey firm Mourant du Feu & Jeune, where he was an advocate, and will lead the BVI litigation and insolvency group. Litigation and insolvency barrister Andrew Willins leaves 29 […]
Fladgate faces potential £10m payout as Izodia gets around to negligence action” />Fladgate may have to pay out in excess of £10m in damages if the negligence action brought against the firm by former dotcom company Izodia is successful. As reported on The Lawyer.com (4 August), the West End firm is being sued over the […]
Linklaters has waded into the multibillion-pound battle for control of nuclear power station operator British Energy. The firm won an instruction from utilities and British Gas parent company Centrica, which emerged last week as a potential bidder for British Energy following the withdrawal of France’s EDF Energy. British Energy is being represented by Clifford Chance, […]
Baker & McKenzie has completed the long-running SR9.25bn (£1.25bn) privatisation and IPO of Saudi government-owned mining company Ma’aden on the Saudi stock market. Bakers has been a long-standing adviser to Ma’aden since it turned into a Saudi government-owned joint stock company in 1997. It is understood that Bakers had been acting on the lead-in to […]
Howrey has won a groundbreaking patent case for new client Eli Lilly after the High Court handed down its first-ever judgment on the patentability of human genes. Mr Justice Kitchin handed victory to pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly against Human Genome Sciences (HGS), invalidating HGS’s patent of a gene sequence on ;the ;grounds ;of obviousness and […]
Reed Smith and Stephenson Harwood have secured a Court of Appeal discharge of a $50m (£25.44m) freezing injunction against the Republic of Bolivia and its state-owned telecommunications company. Netherlands company ETI Euro Telecom International (ETI) originally obtained the freezing injunction through the Commercial Court against Bolivia and Empresa Nacional De Telecomunicaciones (Entel) due to an […]
A team from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett led by partner Alan Klein is advising Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) on its dual listing in Amsterdam and New York. The flotation will see KKR merge with KKR Private Equity Investors, which listed on Euronext Amsterdam two years ago. Citigroup and Lazard are the financial advisers for KKR […]
The current depression in the UK property market has attracted the interest of sovereign wealth funds. But while a number of concerns have been raised, these are mostly unfounded As any firm with a sizeable commercial property department will know, the credit crunch has resulted in a reduced volume of investment transactions involving real estate […]
The lack of liquidity in the commercial housing market of late has piqued the interest of developers in Government-backed schemes – from shared equity initiatives to major infrastructure projects. Some commentators have argued that schemes such as the proposed eco-towns offer developers a free hand, but the level of community resistance means that this is […]
Allen & Overy (A&O) has edged out magic circle rival Clifford Chance to win the lead role advising Spanish airline Iberia on its proposed merger with British Airways (BA). A&O Madrid managing partner Inigo Gomez-Jordana is running the team along with London corporate partner Alan Paul. Clifford Chance had worked on a similar mandate for […]
Government pledges to involve local communities in the planning system are little more than lip service, if the latest planning bill is anything to go by The Government has, in its raft of planning reforms in recent years, gone to great lengths to stress that community involvement is a fundamental tenet of the town and […]