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  • September 1, 2008 |

    Slaughters retains FTSE client rankings top spot

    Slaughter and May has held onto its position as the firm with the largest number of FTSE 100 clients, according to the latest research from Hemscott. The rankings show the elite magic circle firm picked up two additional FTSE 100 clients over the three-month period from 9 May to 4 August, taking its tally to 27 clients with a market capitalisation of £267bn.

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  • 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).

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  • August 6, 2008 |

    US duo take lead on £1.2bn Sony BMG share sale

    Top US firms Davis Polk & Wardwell and Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison have landed roles on the $1.2bn (£616m) sale of German music company Bertelsmann's 50% stake in Sony BMG to Sony Corp. The deal will see the Japanese music giant take full control of the Sony BMG joint venture that was created in August 2004.The newly-formed company will be called Sony Music Entertainment Inc (SMEI) and will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corp.

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  • August 1, 2008 |

    O'Melveny signs up W&C partner for HK arm

    O'Melveny & Myers has bolstered its restructuring and insolvency capabilities with the hire of White & Case partner Mark Fairbairn for the firm's Hong Kong office. Fairbairn will join the US West Coast firm's restructuring and finance practices to focus on advising clients in North Asia on distressed and alternative high-yield investments, restructuring and insolvency.

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  • July 30, 2008 |

    Germany: Internal affairs

    On 15 November, 2006, more than 200 policemen descended on the Munich headquarters of German technology giant Siemens and the homes and offices of 30 Siemens executives around Germany to comb the premises for incriminating documents. It was one of Europe's dreaded 'dawn raids', a term that bears little relation to the time of day but usually denotes the start of a tiresome ballet between the government and a company suspected of wrongdoing. In the traditional European model of prosecution, corporations stonewall and fight to the bitter end.

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  • July 23, 2008 |

    ...Legal Week Lunchbox: 23/07/08...

    The five most popular articles on legalweek.com today; plus the pick of the day's posts

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  • July 22, 2008 |

    Davis Polk wins lead on $43.7bn biotech takeover

    Davis Polk & Wardwell has won the lead role on a $43.7bn (£21.9bn) biotech takeover bid, as Swiss healthcare group Roche offers to buy the remaining shares in US biotech company Genentech. Roche already owns 55.9% on Genentech, and the deal to purchase the remaining 44.1% would form the seventh-largest drug maker in the US, with sales of $15bn (£7.5bn) in the country, according to Roche.

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  • July 22, 2008 |

    ...Legal Week Lunchbox: 22/07/08...

    The five most popular articles on legalweek.com today; the pick of the day's posts; and more

    1 minute read

  • July 14, 2008 |

    Slaughters, A&O take top roles on £1.25bn A&L bid

    Slaughter and May and Allen & Overy (A&O) have bagged top roles on the £1.25bn bid for Alliance & Leicester by Banco Santander. The Spanish banking giant announced today that it has put in an offer for British bank Alliance & Leicester, which was formerly a building society.Slaughter and May fielded a team from its London office advising Banco Santander on corporate, competition and regulatory components to the transaction.Corporate chief Frances Murphy, along with corporate partners Roland Turnill and Andrew Jolly, led a large team from the firm, with tax partner Steve Edge, financial regulatory partner Jan Putnis, competition partner Bertrand Louveaux, and pensions and employment partner Roland Doughty assisting.

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  • July 2, 2008 |

    In-house lawyer: The Italian jobs

    It is a warm spring afternoon in Rome. A group of corporate counsel have gathered for lunch at Gusto, a high-concept Asian fusion restaurant just blocks from the fashionable Via Condotti. At first, it looks like a typical gathering of Italian lawyers. The men wear dark suits; the women, tasteful dresses. They greet each other formally with handshakes and they are all carrying BlackBerrys, pulling them out occasionally to discreetly scan for new email. As the meal proceeds, the lawyers address each other with the familiar tu, even though they are not close friends - something that would have been unthinkable not so long ago. And they flip easily between English and Italian, the choice of language dependent on what they want to say.They talk about their peers in other European countries, their business trips to remote former Soviet republics, and their difficulties with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US. Meet the new breed of Italian in-house lawyer. Once, lawyers working in companies were either non-existent or lonely functionaries who stuck around the office to sign the occasional contract. Today, however, the in-house Bar in Italy is populated by a cadre of young, well-educated, highly-skilled, globally-oriented professionals.

    1 minute read