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  • October 24, 2008 |

    Goodwin set for City launch with Heller team

    Goodwin Procter is set to secure its long-awaited City launch as the Boston leader secures a deal to take a UK hospitality and real estate finance duo from Heller Ehrman. The initial launch, revealed today (24 October) by legalweek.com, will see US-qualified partners Bob Asher and Brian Smith join Goodwin along with two other fee earners. They will take their book of business, which includes relationships with clients such as Starwood and Dorchester Group, to Goodwin.The opening will give Goodwin its first office outside the US. The firm features in the Am Law top 50 and reported profits per equity partner of $880,000 (£543,000) during the last financial year. Goodwin, a regular referral partner of SJ Berwin, has been in expansive form over the last five years, achieving 2007 revenues of $611m (£377m).

    1 minute read

  • October 23, 2008 |

    Kirkland recruits trio in boost for restructuring

    Kirkland & Ellis has added to its City restructuring practice with the hire of two new partners and an associate from the London offices of Sidley Austin, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft and DLA Piper respectively. Jason Salman has joined the firm as a partner from Cadwalader, where he was a special counsel, while Paul Atherton is set to join the firm as a partner in November from Sidley. Meanwhile, Mark Knight joins as an associate from DLA Piper.

    1 minute read

  • October 23, 2008 |

    Analysis: Banking on change

    "The leveraged finance market reality is that there is no new business. The banks will not lend."So says Clifford Chance's (CC's) James Johnson, a man who has built a good chunk of his career in leveraged finance, a market that, more than a year after the credit crunch first struck, is still in a state of dysfunction.Such comments also reflect the attempts by finance advisers to come to terms with a sector that, in the month since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, is facing its biggest shake-up for a generation.Lehman's collapse on 15 September triggered a global run on bank assets as investors feared for banks' solvency. In the weeks since, finance partners have witnessed escalating turmoil and repeated government attempts to head off the crisis. This process culminated last Monday (13 October) with the injection of £37bn of taxpayers' money into Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyds TSB and HBOS.

    1 minute read

  • October 17, 2008 |

    More staff laid off as Heller nears closure

    Today is the last day for most of the remaining Heller Ehrman staff, reports The Recorder. Affected employees were notified by an email from the dissolution committee on Thursday morning, similar to the email sent out last Friday when at least 100 employees were laid off. While it is unclear how many employees are being laid off today, employees in the firm estimate the number to be in the hundreds. The email said that staff would receive health insurance through the end of the month, but it is unclear whether insurance for current or former employees will continue beyond that point. "The firm is devoting intense effort to negotiate a continuation of benefits, and we will keep former employees informed by postings on the firm's internet site," the email promised. The homepage of Heller Ehrman's website has been wiped clean of all but one link to a list of placement opportunities for staff and lawyers.

    1 minute read

  • October 15, 2008 |

    Clifford Chance to lay off 20 US lawyers

    Clifford Chance (CC) is set to cut the jobs of 20 US associates, it has emerged.A statement obtained by Legal Week's US sister title The American Lawyer today (14 October) confirms that the magic circle firm is to lay off 20 associates in its US litigation and dispute resolution group stating that "sluggishness in litigation matters continues despite market volatility".

    1 minute read

  • September 17, 2008 |

    Commentary: Kirkland & Ellis's new funds team delivers on the hype

    When Mark Mifsud and his funds team left the well-maintained fortress of SJ Berwin for the brave frontier of Kirkland & Ellis, their former colleagues were surely hoping they would join the ranks of high-profile moves to US law firms that have under-performed. And with the US firm's most high-profile lateral hires - Graham White and the (now departed) Raymond McKeeve - generally regarded to have taken longer than expected to make inroads in private equity, such hopes would not have looked too far-fetched.

    1 minute read

  • September 10, 2008 |

    Enron firms land record $688m class action payout

    A US district court judge has approved an award of $688m (£391m) in legal fees - the largest award in class action history - to plaintiffs lawyers that obtained $7.2bn (£4.1bn) for former Enron shareholders, reports The Am Law Daily. Judge Melinda Harmon ruled on Monday (8 September) that class counsel should receive 9.52% of the total recovery, including interest. As counsel to the suit's lead plaintiff, the Regents of the University of California, San Diego firm Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins is poised to pocket a substantial amount of the record legal fees.Judge Harmon called the $688m award no 'windfall,' but a "reasonable fee earned by an extraordinary group of lawyers who achieved the largest settlement fund ever despite the great odds against them."

    1 minute read

  • September 3, 2008 |

    Everyone's favourite target

    When it costs almost $100 (£55) to fill the gas tank of the average American's SUV, something's got to change. Conscientious consumers are downsizing their cars to improve gas mileage and conserve energy. But some lawmakers are advocating a more American way: sue the oil producers.In May, the House of Representatives passed a Bill that would amend federal law to allow the US Government to sue the Organisation of the Petroleum-Exporting Countries, or OPEC, for price-fixing. President Bush has vowed to veto the Bill, known as NOPEC, if it passes the Senate.

    1 minute read

  • September 3, 2008 |

    The single solution

    On a crisp sunny day in late March, fee earners from 39 law firms gathered at the corporate headquarters of pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer, a nondescript office building a couple of blocks east of Grand Central Station in New York. The collective mood was cheerful. After all, each of the firms still had a piece of Pfizer's US litigation work. Two years earlier, the company had dumped 80% of its hundreds of outside counsel in a convergence project called P3 - the Pfizer Partnering Programme. Now, representatives from the survivors had been convened to receive an update.There was nothing surprising in what the first speaker, Sandra Phillips, head of the company's product litigation group, had to say. But the second speaker had some unexpected news to deliver. Margaret Madden (pictured right), head of Pfizer's employment law group, explained how her staff had slashed its roster of 50 outside law firms in the first phase of P3 to 10. A quick look around the room, however, revealed that just one of those employment firms was present. What happened to the other nine?

    1 minute read

  • August 8, 2008 |

    Links tops Euro equity capital markets rankings

    Linklaters has retained the top spot in the European equity capital markets deal rankings, with the firm advising on double the amount of deals as its competitors. New research by Thomson Reuters shows the magic circle giant advised on 20 equity capital market deals totalling $14.6bn (£7.2bn) during the first half of 2008, keeping it above Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, which advised on 11 deals worth $29.8bn (£15.3bn).

    1 minute read