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  • April 14, 2011 |

    Santander reviews UK advisers as Barclays quizzes panel on hospitality

    Banco Santander has kicked off a review of its external legal advisers in the UK as it emerges that Barclays is set to grill its global panel firms on corporate hospitality spending for the first time. Santander's review of its own-account legal panel began around two weeks ago and covers the legacy Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley brands.

    1 minute read

  • April 7, 2011 |

    US associate faces charges for using law firm data for insider trading

    A former M&A lawyer has been charged by US prosecutors for an alleged insider trading scheme which involved obtaining information from three leading corporate law firms, writes The Am Law Daily. Matthew Kluger, a former associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Cravath Swaine & Moore and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, has been charged by federal prosecutors in connection with an alleged scheme to trade on inside information. The scheme is alleged to have netted Kluger and a fellow defendant $32m (£19.7m) over more than a decade.

    1 minute read

  • March 29, 2011 |

    Skadden takes key role as tribunal blocks $16bn BP-Rosneft alliance

    Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom has won an arbitration victory for the Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR) group in its dispute with BP over its proposed $16bn (£10bn) strategic alliance with Russia's Rosneft. The arbitration tribunal ruled last week (24 March) that BP will not be allowed to enter into an alliance with Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft, which would have involved an equity-linked partnership to pursue joint projects in the Russian Arctic shelf.

    1 minute read

  • March 29, 2011 |

    Back at the gate - the challenges ahead for private equity

    A few weeks ago news got out that Bain Capital, one of the world's leading private equity firms, was holding interviews for junior investment professionals a month earlier than usual. Bain's competitors, which include Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) and The Blackstone Group, moved quickly, bringing forward their pre-scheduled cocktail party recruiting events. This was not a surprising development. Five years ago private equity houses often did their entry-level hiring in September. During the boom, such intakes kept drifting earlier into the year as rivals jostled to secure the best aspiring deal-doers.

    1 minute read

  • March 23, 2011 |

    Paying the piper - can law firms' love affair with banks survive a series of tough panel reviews?

    Can City law firms' love affair with leading banks survive a bruising round of adviser reviews? Sofia Lind and Friederike Heine report

    1 minute read

  • March 18, 2011 |

    Wragges wins role alongside Weil on private equity sale of Phones 4u

    Wragge & Co has picked up a role advising alongside Weil Gotshal & Manges and Dickson Minto on the private equity sale of Phones 4u. National firm Wragges is advising Phones 4u's management on the deal, which sees the company switch hands from Providence Equity Partners to BC Partners. Birmingham corporate partner Baljit Chohan took the lead role for the firm.

    1 minute read

  • March 15, 2011 |

    Then we take Manhattan - can Norton Rose really take on the world?

    Not too long ago, Norton Rose looked like an also-ran. The London firm, known for its financial institutions practice, stumbled badly after its offices were bombed - twice - by IRA terrorists in the early 1990s. It jumped belatedly on the global bandwagon, establishing a network of European offices that did not turn a profit for half a decade. By the early 2000s, key partners were running for the exits. The magic circle, formerly Norton Rose's closest rivals, had pulled far ahead.

    1 minute read

  • March 15, 2011 |

    Partner profits at top New York firms spike on Wall Street rebound

    Partner profits at elite New York firms saw a strong recovery in 2010 after a surge in M&A and capital markets work, reports The Am Law Daily. Six Wall Street firms in the $2m-plus partner profits (PEP) club saw profitability soar last year, including Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, which saw PEP rise 15% to $3.05m (£1.9m).

    1 minute read

  • March 2, 2011 |

    People are the product - forgotten lessons from Joseph Flom

    Very rarely has a corporate lawyer been so celebrated during life, but judging the legacy of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom pioneer Joseph Flom in the wake of his death last week, his career still looks hugely instructive for the global legal market he helped to create. Perhaps most revealing is a detailed profile of Flom from 1989 penned by The American Lawyer founder Steven Brill, which charts his achievement in pushing Skadden from outsider to the firm that arguably eclipsed its establishment rivals. From an upstart practice founded in 1948 - Flom was the firm's first associate - Skadden seized a huge opportunity when Manhattan's legal elite turned its nose up at the emerging field of proxy fights and hostile takeovers, which evolved through the 1960s and came to transfix Wall Street in the 1980s.

    1 minute read

  • March 2, 2011 |

    GE names Europe M&A counsel as Anheuser-Busch InBev reviews firms

    General Electric (GE) has reviewed its European M&A panel, with four of the five firms appointed in 2007 retaining a place on the roster. Slaughter and May, Weil Gotshal & Manges, Allen & Overy and Ashurst have all been reappointed to the panel for another four-year term. The appointments follow a tender process which kicked off last year and was concluded in January after several months of negotiations.

    1 minute read