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  • October 4, 2010 |

    Weil and Wachtell in pole position as multi-billion Sanofi bid goes hostile

    Weil Gotshal & Manges and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz are taking the key advisory roles as Sanofi-Aventis's multibillion-dollar bid for US biotechnology company Genzyme goes hostile. Weil Gotshal is acting for French pharma company Sanofi on its $18.5bn (£11.7bn) bid with a team including corporate partners Claude Serra in Paris and Michael Aiello in New York. Wachtell is advising Genzyme, with corporate partners Andrew Brownstein and Greg Ostling taking the key roles.

    1 minute read

  • October 4, 2010 |

    Law firms – actually doing better with women than the banks

    Think it's tough for women to climb the ladder at a law firm? Well, law firms are paradigms of progressiveness compared to major banks. At most big firms, female lawyers at least have each other for company. Not so in the halls of high finance, where women are becoming scarce: "Young women are becoming more rare in the country's banks, brokerage houses and insurance companies. Since 2000, the number of women between the ages of 20 and 35 working in finance has dropped by 315,000, or 16.5%, while the number of men in that age range grew by 93,000, or 7.3%," reports The Wall Street Journal, which looked at data provided by the Bureau of Labour Statistics that tracked finance workers from 2002 to 2009.

    1 minute read

  • September 22, 2010 |

    DLA Piper and Linklaters take roles on Banco Santander's Polish bank buyout

    DLA Piper and Linklaters have lined up on Banco Santander's €2.9bn (£2.4bn) acquisition of a majority stake in Bank Zachodni WBK (BZWBK) from Allied Irish Banks (AIB). The acquisition sees DLA Piper advise Banco Santander as it acquires 70.36% of the Polish bank. The team includes City corporate partners Jon Hayes and Polly Owen, Warsaw corporate partner Patryk Laskorzynski and Madrid finance partner Javier Santos. Hayes said: "This is a high-profile transaction for both parties. In the last few years we have done an increasing number of M&A deals globally and see this line of work continuing to grow in emerging markets."

    1 minute read

  • September 21, 2010 |

    Freshfields and A&O take headline roles on £1bn Betfair listing

    Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Allen & Overy (A&O) have won lead roles on the upcoming £1bn initial public offering (IPO) of online gambling company Betfair. Freshfields is advising Betfair with a team including M&A partners Martin Taylor and Tim Jones alongside senior associates Richard Blair and Doug Smith. A&O is advising the underwriters, which include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital and Numis.

    1 minute read

  • September 16, 2010 |

    US briefing: The repo man

    On 1 July 2009, in a conference room high above downtown Chicago, a small group of lawyers were interviewing Matthew Lee, a former executive vice president of finance at Lehman Brothers Holdings. The attorneys were part of a team working for Anton Valukas, the chairman of Jenner & Block and the Lehman bankruptcy examiner. During a break, Lee turned to Matt Basil, a Jenner litigation partner and member of the investigative team. "By the way," Lee asked, "I suspect you want to talk to me about Repo 105?" Lee explained that Repo 105 was the designated term for a bit of accounting sleight of hand involving repurchase agreements that Lehman had used to shift illiquid assets off its books to make its balance sheet appear less leveraged than it actually was. Lee had tried to sound the alarm on Repo 105 several months before Lehman collapsed, but neither bank management nor the company's outside auditors did anything about it, he said.

    1 minute read

  • September 15, 2010 |

    Links and CC lead as RBS returns to securitisation with £4.7bn issuance

    Linklaters and Clifford Chance (CC) have taken lead roles on the Royal Bank of Scotland's £4.7bn mortgage-backed securities sale, in one of the first issuances of its kind since the recession hit. CC acted for RBS with a team including banking and finance partners Kevin Ingram and Emma Matebalavu, while New York capital markets partner Lewis Cohen advised on US law.

    1 minute read

  • September 10, 2010 |

    White & Case and Dewey head up Egyptian bank's $600m eurobond issue

    White & Case and Dewey & LeBoeuf have advised on the issue of a $600m (£390m) eurobond by the National Bank of Egypt (NBE). Dewey & LeBoeuf advised NBE - Egypt's largest bank - with London partner Camille Abousleiman taking the lead role. White & Case advised the underwriters, including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley, with a team led by London partner Stuart Matty.

    1 minute read

  • September 10, 2010 |

    JP Morgan recruits BoA legal veteran for new banking reform brief

    JP Morgan Chase & Co has appointed a senior banking lawyer to a newly-created brief to deal with a raft of financial regulatory reforms occurring around the world, writes Corporate Counsel. The US banking group this week (8 September) announced the hire of Gregory Baer, a deputy general counsel at Bank of America Corporation, to the new post. In a memo to staff, JP Morgan general counsel Stephen Cutler wrote that Baer will be joining the firm at the end of September as managing director and general counsel for corporate and global regulatory. Baer will report to Cutler while splitting his time between New York and Washington DC.

    1 minute read

  • September 9, 2010 |

    Freshfields takes lead for Goldman on multimillion-pound FSA fine

    Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised Goldman Sachs as the investment bank was today handed down a multimillion-pound fine by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The regulator has ordered the investment banking giant to pay £17.5m as a penalty for neglecting to inform it that its executive director Fabrice Toure was subject to a fraud investigation by US financial authorities when he became an FSA-approved person upon relocating to the UK in 2008. Freshfields acted for Goldman with a team led by City-based financial institutions disputes partner Simon Orton, while the FSA used in-house counsel.

    1 minute read

  • September 6, 2010 |

    Cleary takes top role for Brazilian oil firm on record $75bn share offering

    Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton is advising Brazilian oil and gas giant Petrobras on its plan to raise nearly $75bn (£49bn) in the world's largest-ever share sale, reports The Am Law Daily. The US firm is acting as issuer's counsel on the sale, which will finance investments in developing offshore oil fields.

    1 minute read