Slaughters and friends feel the heat September 15, 2009 CITY solicitors are hooked on league tables, and the latest one feeding their addiction is a new ranking that details which law firms are bagging FTSE 100 instructions. Movement at the top has got tongues wagging, as the historically dominant Slaughter and May has seen its position challenged for the first time in years, triggering [...]
Years of hard work yield success for London’s first couple of wine September 13, 2009 WHEN wine-lover Xavier Rolet, the new CEO of the London Stock Exchange, first saw the house known as La Verriere in southwest France in 1992, he knew he liked it. What he didn’t know was that the 100 acres of old, neglected vineyards on the mountainous property would become the site of a full-blown, deeply [...]
Private equity eyes up City law firms September 1, 2009 THE BELEAGUERED legal profession, says Jeremy Hand, managing partner of private equity firm Lyceum Capital, is facing “a fire-storm whipped up by the recession, smarter customers, technology, outsourcing and legislation”. If that wasn’t trouble enough, it’s also being forcibly opened up to competition that could arise from the so-called Tesco Law – the shorthand for [...]
THINK HARD BEFORE YOU GO INTO LAW August 18, 2009 SPEAKER’S CORNERDES HUDSONCHIEF EXECUTIVE, THE LAW SOCIETY NOBODY who reads the legal press can fail to have noticed recently that the legal profession is feeling the pain of the recession. Solicitors are facing tough times and there are fewer places for newly-qualified solicitors than there have been for years. Becoming a solicitor is still a [...]
The cut-throat world of New York’s super-rich August 12, 2009 HEDGE FUND WIVESBY TATIANA BONCOMPAGNIHarper Collins, £6.99 IT may sound a little out of date – after all, we’re so over hedgies and their failed fortunes. Except the New York hedge fund world, including its cut-throat circle of wives, still holds more interest than you’d think. This is not the first tale of high finance [...]
Big Brother in the Square Mile raises legal issues August 11, 2009 THERE is nothing so British as fear of Big Brother. And perhaps, not without reason – the UK has 20 per cent of the world’s CCTV cameras. But the latest fear is being spied on at work. City firms have begun to import state-of-the-art tactics to keep a close eye on employees, and it is [...]
Tough times for graduates, but top candidates can still find jobs August 5, 2009 THE TALK this week may have been all about healthy bank profits and the return of bonuses, but that will be cold comfort to university graduates struggling to kick off their City careers. As stories circle of highly qualified grads finding themselves locked out of training positions, with companies being forced to cut intakes and [...]
SANTANDER CHIEF BREAKING CITY HEARTS WITH HIS EXOTIC CHARM August 3, 2009 WHILE all the big British bank bosses are pitted against each other this week in terms of first-half profits, Spanish bank Santander’s UK boss António Horta-Osório has been enjoying the glory of a rather more frivolous accolade. Horta-Osório became chief executive of Abbey in August 2006, after long stints at the helm of the bank’s [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 3, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES UK ATTORNEY GENERAL VOWS FRAUD CRACKDOWNBritain aims to become the most hostile country in the world to fraudsters, the government’s top law officer has pledged, in an eye-catching riposte to growing criticism about the lack of big financial crime cases being mounted. Baroness Scotland, attorney-general, said domestic investigation agencies would soon be giving [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING July 20, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES CHINA FUND TAKES DIAGEO STAKEChina’s sovereign wealth fund has acquired 1.1 per cent of the Diageo drinks group, giving it a stake worth £221m, in a sign of its emerging strategy to spread its investments over different global markets and asset classes. The move by China Investment, which manages $200bn of the country’s [...]