Filter This View

  • July 24, 2008 |

    BAE hunts for senior talent ahead of legal review

    Aerospace and defence giant BAE Systems is set to expand its in-house legal team as part of an extensive overhaul of its legal function that will ultimately see external advisers reviewed. The department, led by general counsel Philip Bramwell, has already made a series of hires - with Clyde & Co lawyer Jo Talbot joining this week to head dispute resolution and risk management across the group. Talbot's appointment marks the half-way point in Bramwell's three-year restructuring of the legal team, which began when he joined from telecoms company O2 in January 2007. A series of further hires are also expected over the next few months.

    1 minute read

  • July 24, 2008 |

    Top lawyers call for career guidance for older partners

    Some of the City's leading legal names have called for more options to be made available to partners as they approach retirement age. Figures including Linklaters senior partner David Cheyne and Slaughter and May corporate partner Nigel Boardman joined a roundtable hosted by Dominique Graham, director at consultancy Graham Gill, to look at what firms should be doing for partners coming up to retirement. Participants called for firms to offer those nearing retirement age help to find positions outside the law and, in particular, to start dealing with the issue earlier on.

    1 minute read

  • July 24, 2008 |

    Energy giant United Utilities merges in-house teams in legal restructuring

    United Utilities general counsel Tom Keevil has overhauled the energy giant's legal function and made a number of senior internal appointments within the team. As part of the revamp Keevil has merged the FTSE 100 company's distinct regulatory and non-regulatory legal teams into a single unit, with four teams put in place to deal with commercial, litigation, property and environmental matters.

    1 minute read

  • July 24, 2008 |

    Romanian indie Nestor loses senior trio

    Highly-regarded Romanian independent Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen is set to lose three partners, including the heads of its M&A and real estate groups. The three are planning to leave the firm, a referral partner of Slaughter and May, later this summer (15 August) to launch their own practice in Bucharest.

    1 minute read

  • July 23, 2008 |

    In-house Lawyer: All systems go

    BAE Systems' ambitious group general counsel Philip Bramwell has only been in his role for 18 months but is already well into a major restructuring of the defence and aerospace giant's legal function.

    1 minute read

  • July 23, 2008 |

    GlaxoSmithKline signs up Sidley partner as new GC

    Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has completed its hunt for a new general counsel with Sidley Austin life science partner Daniel Troy set to take the role. Troy, who will also take up the position of senior vice president, is set to join the company on 2 September.

    1 minute read

  • 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.

    1 minute read

  • July 17, 2008 |

    GE Real Estate names new GC for Europe

    General Electric (GE) Real Estate has appointed Marianna Nitsch as general counsel of its European arm. Nitsch, who was formerly the legal head of the company's French division, took up the post at the beginning of July following the promotion of predecessor Theirry Leleu to the role of European managing director of GE Real Estate's Global Investment Management platform.

    1 minute read

  • July 17, 2008 |

    Magic circle firms confirm status in global elite

    The US's top law firms have outperformed their key UK rivals, despite a year of robust growth from the UK's leading practices. Legal Week's top 50 shows that UK firms achieved average revenue growth of 12.5% during 2007-08. This compares with an increase of revenue in 13.6% at the 100 largest law firms in the US in 2007, according to The American Lawyer, Legal Week's US sister title.

    1 minute read

  • July 16, 2008 |

    In-house Lawyer: Conflicting views

    The conflict debate continues to divide clients and advisers. Leigh Jackson finds that upfront communication goes a long way

    1 minute read