Forsters‘ property fund practice is gathering pace after the firm waschosen by the newly created Active Retail for its inaugural acquisition. Scottish-based Active Retail was set up this year and brought Forsters onboard for its £11.5m purchase of the Priory Centre. Smita Edwards, a commercial property partner at Forsters who isresponsible for the burgeoning Active […]
Clifford Chance and Linklaters are set to divvy up £800,000 betweenthem for the first stage in a £300m negligence claim brought againstembattled accountant Ernst &Young (E&Y) by a DaimlerChryslersubsidiary. The claim, E&Y’s second since being hit with a £2.6bn lawsuit bythe directors of troubled insurer Equitable Life, revolves around the saleof ERF, a UK truck-building […]
British Waterways has rejected its panel firms in favour of Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP), which trounced rivals for the main role on a £2bn regeneration project. BLP’s first-ever instruction for British Waterways, a public corporation which manages 2,000 miles of rivers and canals, came after winning a tender against five other firms, understood to include […]
Why two very different firms have decided to form an alliance on IT projects. It was a relationship fostered at Barclays, and now DLA and Allen & Overy (A&O) are best friends again, this time teaming up to work on the world’s largest IT project: the £2.3bn national NHS IT programme. The two firms were […]
San Francisco’s Gray Cary has nudged aside Baker Botts to gain instructionon the Cirrus Logic lawsuit that stopped the flotation of WolfsonMicroelectronics in its tracks. The initial public offering (IPO) of Edinburgh’s Wolfson on the LondonStock Exchange, valuing the company at more than £213m, was due totake place last week, making it the first major […]
A unique alliance has been launched between common law and criminal set 7 Bedford Row and a Jersey-based law firm and consultancy practice specialising in financial crime and regulatory work. The alliance is with BakerPlatt Group, which comprises law firm Baker Associates and consultancy firm Finance Sector Compliance Advisers. The Bar Council spent about three […]
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has confirmed its belief that the QC system distorts competition and does not serve customers’ best interests. The OFT issued the statement last Friday in response to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer’s consultation on the future of the silk system and after the Bar Council launched its own consultation. […]
A triumvirate of law firms has joined forces for one of the fewbillion-pound deals of the year, General Electric’s (GE) £5.7bntakeover of UK healthcare group Amersham.GE has turned to its usual UK law firm Slaughter and May for corporatead… A triumvirate of law firms has joined forces for one of the few billion-pound deals of […]
Denton Wilde Sapte has bulked up its finance group with the hire of Clifford Chance lawyer David Cohen, reflecting the firm’s increasing workload in the area. Cohen will join James Curtis and Farmita Bi as the third partner in the group. “We’ve had a very successful two years,” Bi told The Lawyer. “We thought it […]
Manchester firm Rowe Cohen is ramping up its corporate capability with the hire of Cobbetts partner Andrew Curwen as the department’s fifth partner. Curwen spent 11 years at Cobbetts as a specialist in M&A, predominantly for owner-managed businesses and SMEs. He worked on the £15m disposal of the Manchester-based Continental Fine Foods and the public […]
Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) has drafted in Reynolds Porter Chamberlain partner David Hooper (left), the lawyer who acted for John Major in relation to the Edwina Currie affair, to advise on ‘Betsygate’. Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Sir Philip Mawer is investigating allegations made public by the BBC regarding the employment of IDS’s wife […]
The London office of US firm Shaw Pittman has closed down its corporate practice following the departure of corporate partners Charles Severs and Robert Bishop for DLA last month. The two remaining associates from the corporate group have now departed, with one joining Severs and Bishop at DLA. The London office is now stripped down […]