Benfield Greig Group, the London reinsurance broker, buys US rival EW Blanch Holdings for £123m. Benfield Greig advised by Debevoise & Plimpton (Andrew Sommer) and Ashurst Morris Crisp (Jeremy Hill). EW Blanch advised by Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson. Following the provisional liquidation of Daewoo in the UK, TWR Group acquires Daewoo’s technical centre […]
Hammerson sells Senator House, London EC2, to Australian pension fund Challenger International for £86m. Hammerson advised by Nabarro Nathanson (James Madden). Challenger International advised by Herbert Smith (James Barnes). Bristol & West subsidiary Chase de Vere Investments agrees new 25-year lease for Eastcheap offices with landlord Taylor Woodrow Developments, with rent set at £55 per […]
LeBoeuf’s James Johnson loves the London life but after six years he is looking forward to returning to New York, despite the different working style Stepping into James Johnson’s office at LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae is like stepping into a New York lawyer’s office as you would imagine it to have been about 50 […]
ITN has hired John Battle as its first in-house head of compliance. Battle joins from Associated Newspapers where he was group legal adviser. He will head ITN’s libel panel and will have primary responsibility for pre-publication advice and other compliance issues. ITN’s director of business affairs and company secretary James Scorer says the appointment reflects […]
The highly-rated head of Hammond Suddards Edge’s national insolvency and corporate recovery practice is retiring. Paul Rhodes, who is based in the firm’s Leeds office, has been head of the practice for two and a half years, since joining from arch rival DLA. He was managing partner of the then Dibb Lupton Broomhead between 1993 […]
Osborne Clarke has pulled off its first technology initial public offering (IPO) on the main London stock market this year, in what is believed to be the first new listing by an IT company of 2001. The firm, led by corporate partners Bruce Roxburgh and Tim Birt, advised long-term client Marlborough Sterling on its £76m […]
Hextall Erskine senior partner John Bundy fell into law by accident. But the chance stops there- purposefulness has been his driving force ever since
Rowe & Maw is ramping up its banking department and adding a senior partner from Eversheds‘ London office. Simon Pullen, the third loss for Eversheds’ City banking team in a year, will add more across-the-board banking expertise and boost the firm’s trade finance practice. Rowe & Maw is on a push to get more work […]
Clifford Chance Rogers & Wells (CCR&W) is taking on a team of partners for its litigation department from US firm Chadbourne & Parke. Chadbourne’s head of intellectual property (IP) Eric Lobenfeld and partners Drew Wintringham and Ira Schaefer are all jumping ship. They claim that as many as five of their associates plan to join […]
The London office of Chicago firm McDermott Will & Emery is setting up a new practice group to advise investment banks on e-commerce work. The group, dubbed the financial markets technology practice, will be cross-disciplinary and will include US-based lawyers even though it is headed out of London. It will advise financial services institutions, software […]
Slaughter and May scooped this deal from the jaws of Freshfields after it had a massive conflict – being the law firm of choice for both Powergen, through London, and E.ON, through merger partner Bruckhaus Westrick Heller Löber in Germany. Slaughters was called in without beauty parading, in a move believed to be the result […]
Another nice deal for London-based Cleary Gottlieb partner Andrew Curran, who joined the firm from Lovells in 1997. This sale comes hard on the heels of his work for Kobe Steel and its subsidiary Kobelco Construction Machinery in its global alliance with CNH Global (The Lawyer, 16 April), and last year he advised Robert Fleming […]