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 […]
Herbert Smith and Dutch alliance partner Stibbe have swooped on longstanding Linklaters client Getronics, advising the Dutch IT giant for the first time. The firms have just completed a e100m (£69.8m) convertible bond issue for Getronics, a company Stibbe got to know while advising its banks on a similar bond issue in February this year. Linklaters has […]
Beatrice Mtetwa, the Zimbabwe lawyer currently acting to prevent the closure of the country’s last independent newspaper, has allegedly been brutally attacked by police just days before her court hearing. Mtetwa, who represented The Guardian reporter Andy Meldrum when he was illegally deported by the Mugabe regime, has been advising The Daily News, which was […]
A EUROPEAN commissioner has broken a Brussels taboo by calling on the European Commission to propose fewer regulations. Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch internal market commissioner, told Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad that tougher safeguards should be written into the new EU constitution to curb his own institution’s “tendency to over-regulate”. He even suggested new powers should be […]
The latest deal to grip the Italian market has gifted US firms Davis Polk & Wardwell and Sullivan & Cromwell key roles on a $4bn (£2.39bn) bond issue and a medium-term note programme for up to e10bn (£6.98bn). Telecom Italia has brought in favoured US adviser Davis Polk to work with Gianni Origoni Grippo’s Antonio […]
Joe Flom, the sole surviving name partner at Skadden, has more experience than… well, anyone really. Joe Flom looks almost offended when I ask him if he is 80. “I’ll be 80 in the summer,” the septuagenarian quickly corrects me in his soft Brooklyn accent. While insulting the person you are interviewing is probably not […]
Lovells acted for the Guardian Media Group on its acquisition of the management shareholding in Trader Media Group. As the publisher of Auto Trader magazine, Trader Media Group was formed in a joint venture between Guardian Media and private equity house BC Partners in 2000. The deal values Trader Media Group at £1.14bn. Dickson Minto […]
Has the creation of M-Law signalled a sea change in the provision of legal services? asks Matt Byrne Carlton and Granada’s merger stole the media market headlines last week – no doubt Lovells and Slaughter and May are already mentally spending the fees. But at the other end of the money scale there are equally […]
Lovells has scooped its first acquisition finance mandate for Société Générale (SocGen) since the bank put together its global panel earlier this year. SocGen, with Fortis Bank and ING Bank, provided senior facilities of e198m (£118.3m) and e30m (£17.9m) of mezzanine funding for 3i’s secondary buyout of Dutch soft drinks company Refresco. 3i bought e240m […]
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer is involved in the increasingly complex battle for control of Midlands Electricity after Dundas & Wilson client Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) backed out of a billion-pound takeover. It is understood that Freshfields is acting for E.ON-owned Powergen in its attempt to buy Midlands for £1.2bn after a group of bondholders owed £600m, […]
Norton Rose has underlined its position in the mid-level acquisition finance market by snaring its second deal for NIB Capital Bank in the space of a year. The firm acted for NIB as the debt provider in the e145m (£103m) leveraged recapitalisation of Dutch packaging company Schoeller Wavin Systems, which also saw the transactional debut […]
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 […]