Brussels set to crack down on price-fixing in Europe; MDP bans to be scrutinised The European Commission is launching a high-level inquiry into anticompetitive behaviour in law firms.Competition Commissioner Mario Monti is examining whether rules set by every legal regulator in Europe encourage anticompetitive behaviour that is against the public interest. A public hearing to […]
Eversheds is in talks with at least two firms from Denton Wilde Sapte’s collapsed European network, The Lawyer can reveal. Head of international at Eversheds Alan Jenkins is leading talks with Dentons’ former Spanish member Denton Lupicinio, which in turn has introduced the UK firm to former Austrian member Baier Lambert. It is understood that […]
Linklaters is stepping up its drive to outstrip the income of magic circle rivals with plans to increase profitability by nearly 40 per cent in the next two years. Sources have informed The Lawyer that Linklaters’ management is expecting top of equity to reach £1.25m and bottom of lockstep to grow to £500,000 by 2005, […]
The Law Society is planning to launch its second investigation into Allen & Overy (A&O), this time on the back of a successful victimisation claim made against the firm by project manager Shazia Wahab. A string of other discrimination claims brought by Wahab were dismissed by the London Central Employment Tribunal on 23 September. However, […]
Vinson & Elkins has ditched its London-led finance practice to concentrate purely on work from the US.The Houston, Texas-based firm has parted company with London-based finance partner Peter Gaines, signalling the end of the road for the practice area. Gaines joined Vinson & Elkins in 2001 from Baker & McKenzie. Prior to that, the US-qualified […]
Lawyers for three firms went to court last week to seek payment of £7m in costs from third-party funders in a landmark case. If they lose, despite having won the substantive action, their clients – shipping lines who were wrongly accused of setting up a cartel that drove the claimant out of business – will have to […]
A former solicitor who was struck from the roll has resigned as company secretary of legal services provider Willmakers of Distinction. Nicholas Butcher was convicted in 1998 on charges of false accounting, theft and conspiracy to defraud, following the theft of £50,000 from client bank accounts. He was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment, declared bankrupt […]
Rowe Cohen, the Manchester firm which operated a claims vetting service for collapsed claims manager The Accident Group (TAG), is being investigated by the Law Society. Rowe Cohen was responsible for filtering personal injury claims that came through TAG to the company’s panel of solicitors. A Law Society spokesperson said: “The focus of the investigation […]
The long-awaited corporate killing law will have a dramatic effect on safety in the workplace. Tan Ikram reports on the problems involved in establishing liability The introduction of the Enterprise Act 2002 in the UK means that company directors can now be held individually responsible for anti-competitive behaviour. For the first time, they face the […]
Emile Woolf reveals the much misunderstood role of auditors in the fight against white collar crime Rogues abound, and the form that white collar crime takes may vary with developments in the business environment, but the categories of wrongdoing outlast the methods: diverting remittances from debtors; misappropriating cash sales; creating false expenses; inserting dummy names […]
The increase in economic crime shows no signs of abating. Will Kenyon outlines best practice for dealing with this most understated of problems More than half of UK companies have suffered from one or more cases of economic crime in the past two years, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Global Economic Crime Survey 2003, published […]
The SEC and the FSA have contrasting roles to play in reducing financial crime. Jason Mansell examines the FSA’s difficulties as both regulator and prosecutor The UK and the US have adopted different methods to deal with the problem of white collar crime. In the US, there is a clear demarcation between the powers of […]