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  • May 11, 2010 |

    Simmons finance practice set to keep quietly outperforming

    Simmons & Simmons may have seen a double-digit fall in revenue in the last financial year, but the prospects look relatively rosy for the firm's upwardly-mobile finance practice. Out of Simmons' four sector groups, financial institutions now count for around half of the firm's international business after the group's income more than doubled between 2005 and 2009. Since City banking partner Jeremy Hoyland took over the helm of the financial markets practice group from current managing partner Mark Dawkins five years ago, the firm has maintained a low-key but steady ascent up the pecking order of many of the world's leading banking institutions.

    1 minute read

  • May 5, 2010 |

    Cleary and Linklaters advise on $5.5bn Russian Government bond

    Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and Linklaters have advised on the Russian Government's $5.5bn (£3.6bn) bond, the state's first visit to the capital markets since the emerging market crisis of 1998. Cleary's team for the Russian Government included partners David Sabel handling litigation and arbitration matters, David Gottlieb for M&A and capital markets and litigator Simon Ovenden.

    1 minute read

  • April 27, 2010 |

    Elite trio take top roles on US Treasury's Citigroup share sale

    Simpson Thacher & Bartlett is advising the US Treasury on its plan to unload 7.7 billion government-owned Citigroup shares in a series of sales rather than all at once, reports The Am Law Daily. The US Government has retained Morgan Stanley to prepare the sale and place the initial batch of 1.5 billion Citi shares on the market, with Davis Polk & Wardwell and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton sharing the job of advising Morgan Stanley.

    1 minute read

  • April 23, 2010 |

    Magic circle duo take top roles on biggest London IPO for three years

    Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters have won roles on the largest London listing in nearly three years, reports The Am Law Daily. Essar Energy, a subsidiary of Indian conglomerate Essar Group, has set a price range for its planned $2.5bn (£1.6bn) initial public offering (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange.

    1 minute read

  • April 14, 2010 |

    US Briefing: Road trip

    At around 3pm on 6 October 2009, roughly 100 lawyers and executives filed into a conference room in Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom's Manhattan office. It had taken three years, 11 months and 29 days to get to this moment: Delphi was emerging from the depths of bankruptcy and passing into the hands of its former parent, General Motors Company (GM), as well as two lenders. There was a palpable sense of exhaustion in the room; the close had been convened seven hours earlier. The Veuve Clicquot, selected by Delphi lead lawyer John 'Jack' Butler Jr but poured prematurely, was flat.

    1 minute read

  • April 14, 2010 |

    Leading Indian firm tops Asia M&A league as deals recover

    India's AZB & Partners has topped the volume rankings for Asia-Pacific M&A for the first quarter of 2010, knocking Australian leader Freehills down to second place against the same period last year. Mergermarket's Asia-Pacific rankings for Q1 show the Clifford Chance (CC) alliance firm advised on 15 deals over the period, ranking it ahead of Freehills, which advised on 14.

    1 minute read

  • March 17, 2010 | International Edition

    Pharmaceuticals: The game changer

    The pharmaceutical industry is facing uncertain times as a once-lucrative business model buckles under a globalising world economy. Charlotte Edmond reports on the companies and lawyers battling to secure all-important intellectual property in a rapidly changing market

    1 minute read

  • March 17, 2010 |

    White & Case City base posts 20% drop in revenues for 2009

    White & Case's London office has emerged as the worst performing City arm of a US law firm in 2009 - a year in which results varied significantly between firms. White & Case saw London revenues plunge by just under 20% to $197m (£130m) during the 2009 calendar year, with profits per equity partner (PEP) dropping by 11% to $1.32m (£872,000).

    1 minute read

  • March 17, 2010 |

    Pharmaceuticals: The game changer

    The pharmaceutical industry is facing uncertain times as a once-lucrative business model buckles under a globalising world economy. Charlotte Edmond reports on the companies and lawyers battling to secure all-important intellectual property in a rapidly changing market

    1 minute read

  • March 15, 2010 |

    Unwanted attention: Linklaters takes headline role in Lehman report

    For our purposes, the highlight of the 2,200-page report released last Thursday (11 March) examining the demise of Lehman Brothers starts at around page 700, when the examiner, Jenner & Block chair Anton Valukas, delves into the accounting tricks Lehman used to temporarily shift $50bn (£33bn) in bad assets off of its balance sheet. This detail jumps out at us because the report names Linklaters as the only firm Lehman could find to bless the transactions in the way Lehman wanted, according to our reading of the report.

    1 minute read