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  • 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).

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  • 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

  • February 23, 2011 |

    Skadden mourns death of name partner and M&A pioneer Joe Flom

    Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom is mourning the passing of veteran New York corporate partner Joe Flom, who died this morning at the age of 87. Flom joined Skadden as the firm's first associate in 1948 and went on to become one of the most well-known corporate lawyers in the US during a career spanning six decades. He helped guide Skadden from a four-lawyer practice to a global law firm with 2,000 lawyers.

    1 minute read

  • February 22, 2011 |

    A&O and Skadden take top roles on Shell's $1bn Africa shareholding sale

    Allen & Overy (A&O) and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom have won the lead mandates on Shell's $1bn (£617m) sale of parts of its African business. The deal, which comes as Shell moves to sell off non-core operations, will see oil trader Vitol and private equity firm Helios Investment Partners acquire the majority of Shell's shareholdings in its downstream businesses in Africa.

    1 minute read

  • February 22, 2011 |

    The Global 100: The tracks of my tiers

    Once again, it's merger-talk season. There was a flurry of activity last year that culminated in the various Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, Norton Rose and Squire Sanders & Dempsey transoceanic combinations. They were notable because they all opted to organise as Swiss vereins rather than single-profit sharing partnerships, and all were motivated, at least in part, by a desire to get bigger so they could compete for work and talent that was waiting for those firms that, well, got bigger. The wooing continues. Consultants log George Clooney-esque air miles trying to complete promising law firm mergers. And partners seek to convince themselves either that they're not being acquired or that an acquisition is necessary to have a chance at becoming one of the Select 17 (or whatever) who will stand astride the known world, someday really soon.

    1 minute read

  • February 22, 2011 |

    Renaissance man - Ashar Qureshi on quitting Cleary for a senior banking role

    "People are realising that a single event - even a major one - isn't enough to throw emerging markets off course anymore," remarks Ashar Qureshi, vice chairman of Renaissance Group, the Russia-based investment bank specialising in investments in the CIS and Africa. "Take Egypt, where we have investments and trade securities," he continues. "Despite the crisis, stocks in companies based there haven't shown the fragility many assumed they would." Qureshi's involvement with emerging markets work dates back to the early 1990s, when he was drafted onto the privatisation of Mexican telecoms company Telmex as a junior associate in Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton's New York office. "Emerging markets comes naturally to me. Maybe it's something to do with being brought up in Pakistan," he says. His specialism in this area gathered pace when, aged 27, he left the Big Apple to take up a role in Cleary's highly-regarded London capital markets team.

    1 minute read

  • February 18, 2011 |

    Davis Polk plans Sao Paulo launch as law firms continue to flock to Brazil

    Davis Polk & Wardwell has announced plans to establish a Brazil office later this year, reports The Am Law Daily. The office, the US firm's 10th around the world, could open as early as the middle of the year, though the date is subject to approval by Brazilian authorities. The announcement comes three months after Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton announced its intention to open in Sao Paulo.

    1 minute read

  • February 15, 2011 |

    IPO outlook - finely balanced but still tipping the wrong way

    Equity capital markets (ECM) lawyers eyeing up another year of uncertainty must be wondering which will win out in 2011: irresistible force or immovable object? On one hand, you have the building pressure to tap the equity markets from the growing queue of companies that have been put off braving the market for more than two years thanks to tough market conditions. In theory, at some point issuers with solid stories for investors must accept that there will be no quick return to rosy valuations and just get on with it.

    1 minute read

  • February 11, 2011 |

    The $10m question - how long can partner comp buck the global pay race?

    Feeling light on inspiration, I'm indebted to The Wall Street Journal and Adam Smith, Esq for giving me something to get my teeth into with a prominent piece this week from The Journal. The article charts the dramatic increase in the size of pay packages being offered to star US partners and the related widening of the gap between for partners, citing top-end packages in the $10m (£6.3m) region against $640,000 (£405,000) for the water-carriers. Interesting nuggets in the article include the fact that Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom last year widened the range between top and bottom-earners, while the wide pay range is also highlighted at firms as disparate at Hogan Lovells, K&L Gates and DLA Piper. Packages for top partners cited include deals of $6m (£4m) at DLA Piper in the US and $8m (£5m) at Kirkland & Ellis. The Journal's claim is that the most sought-after rainmakers now often earn eight to 10 times that of the lowest-paid equity earners within the same firm.

    1 minute read