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  • October 1, 2008 |

    Weil Gotshal heads new $2.15bn Lehman sell-off

    After selling off $1.75bn (£970m) in assets to Barclays, bankrupt giant Lehman Brothers is to sell much of its money management business to Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman for about $2.15bn (£1.19bn) in cash, reports The American Lawyer. Weil Gotshal & Manges, Lehman's bankruptcy counsel, is handling the deal on Lehman's end.

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  • September 30, 2008 |

    Weil Gotshal heads up new $2.15bn Lehman sell-off

    After selling off $1.75bn (£970m) in assets to Barclays, bankrupt giant Lehman Brothers is to sell much of its money management business, including its asset management unit, Neuberger Berman, to Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman for about $2.15bn (£1.19bn) in cash, reports The American Lawyer.The Neuberger business is among the biggest outstanding issues for Lehman. Weil Gotshal & Manges, Lehman's bankruptcy counsel, is handling the deal on Lehman's end. A twelve-partner team from Boston-based firm Ropes & Gray advised longstanding client Bain on the acquisition.

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  • September 30, 2008 |

    ...Legal Week Lunchbox: 30/09/08...

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

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  • September 25, 2008 |

    Ex-Weil Gotshal man sets up own boutique

    Former Weil Gotshal & Manges Paris banking partner Jonathan Nabarro has set up his own boutique. Nabarro, who left Weil Gotshal in March this year, has launched Nabarro Associes with long-term co-worker Jennifer Hinge. Hinge, who is also a partner in the venture, has worked with Nabarro as an associate for the last seven years, during which time he has been a partner with Weil Gotshal, Allen & Overy (A&O) and Ashurst.The pair focus on advising European and US banks, mezzanine lenders and private equity houses on financing leveraged buy-outs, public-to-private transactions, takeover bids and restructuring.Nabarro told Legal Week that the firm's strategy is to remain a boutique firm concentrating on debt and debt restructuring work.The firm has, Nabarro said, no intention of branching out into different areas. He maintained: "It is an intentional strategy to remain relatively small and keep it specialised. A lot of firms do not have such a practice, so we could gain referrals. The idea is to stay expert in a narrow field."Nabarro joined Weil Gotshal in December 2005 as a partner. Before that he spent just under two years as A&O's Paris leveraged finance head. Nabarro joined the magic circle law firm in early 2004 from Ashurst, where he spent eight years. Emmanuel Ringeval took on sole leadership of Weil Gotshal's Paris banking practice after Nabarro's departure.

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  • September 24, 2008 |

    It's bonus time

    Since bonuses were introduced by law firms in the late 1990s as a way to limit the long-term effects of salary inflation, amounts paid out - and the hoops that assistants have to jump through in order to get their hands on the cash - have varied wildly between firms. Some firms give tens of thousands of pounds to assistants regardless of individual performance, while others require Olympian levels of all-round commitment in return for sums that could probably be more easily obtained through a few after hours' shifts at the local pub.

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  • September 22, 2008 |

    Bank in-housers seek law firms as safe port in Wall St storm

    Financial industry lawyers who in the past may have opted for in-house positions at a company like Bear Stearns for lifestyle and work environment benefits…

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  • September 22, 2008 |

    New Lehman sell-off hands lead roles to US trio

    Just days after Lehman Brothers sold off $1.75bn (£950m) in assets to Barclays, the bankrupt giant is in talks to sell its investment-management unit to private equity firms Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman, according to sources familiar with the deal. A lawyer familiar with the deal says Weil Gotshal & Manges, Lehman's bankruptcy counsel, is handling the deal for Lehman. The source says Ropes & Gray is representing Bain, a longtime Ropes client.

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  • September 18, 2008 |

    Weil Gotshal, Linklaters take headline roles on dramatic Lehman collapse

    The collapse of Lehman Brothers and takeover of fellow Wall Street institution Merrill Lynch earlier this week have generated roles for a raft of top law firms on both sides of the Atlantic. Weil Gotshal & Manges and Linklaters have both secured lucrative mandates on Lehman's collapse as fears about the wider implications mount.Weil Gotshal was appointed as the main legal adviser to the stricken lender, which filed for Chapter 11 on Sunday night (14 September) after numerous failed attempts to shed its 'toxic assets'. Potential buyers including the Korean Development Bank, Bank of America and Barclays all walked away after weeks of discussions before the bank's spectacular collapse. The mandate will be seen as a coup for Weil Gotshal as the firm's top-tier restructuring practice has lost a stream of high-profile names in recent years, both in the US, where practice co-head Martin Bienenstock last year quit for Dewey & LeBoeuf, and in London, where Chris Mallon quit to join New York rival Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom. Meanwhile in London, Link-laters' role for PricewaterhouseCoopers as the bank's administrator is likely to be the envy of many of its City rivals. The firm is fielding a team under restructuring chief Tony Bugg, banking partner Richard Holden and corporate partner David Ereira advising on UK aspects of the proceedings.

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  • September 18, 2008 |

    Commentary: The new world

    Writing this column on Tuesday, even the most worldly-wise lawyers are struggling to assess this week's extraordinary events on Wall Street on their own businesses. And come Thursday, when this column is published, they will still be asking most of the same questions. After all, seeing two of New York's leading investment houses cease to exist as independent entities would have been considered unthinkable until recently. Now Lehman's insolvency - the largest US corporate bankruptcy ever and the most significant bank failure since the international liberalisation of the securities industry in the 1980s - is a defining chapter in the story of global business. Yet leaving aside the very considerable uncertainty over the position of AIG, assessing the impact of Lehman's failure on lawyers is hard. Investment banks are middle men and so do not simply expand and reduce work levels by dint of their existence. So the impact of Lehman on advisers in New York and London is not as simple as its workflow drying up - that flow of work will migrate elsewhere, once demand resumes. Insolvency advisers, among them Weil Gotshal & Manges and Linklaters in the UK, also have the boon of picking up what promises to be one of the most complex insolvencies ever (or possibly until next week if we're unlucky).

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  • September 17, 2008 |

    Judge: Nixon Peabody did not 'steal' Taylor Wessing partners

    Taylor Wessing has lost its battle to stop Nixon Peabody hiring 12 partners after a trial judge ruled the US firm violated no law despite agreeing to a two-year moratorium on recruiting from Taylor Wessing in the wake of failed merger talks, reports The American Lawyer. The ruling by Judge Kenneth Fisher calls into question the kind of non-compete agreements that make merger talks between firms possible, says Dreier name partner Marc Dreier, who represented Taylor Wessing in litigation stemming from those failed talks.Nixon management praised the ruling.

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