17 October 2017
Breakfast seminar: Stop the Clock! Limitation in Industrial Disease Claims (London)
No5 Barristers’ Chambers Greenwood House 4-7 Salisbury Court London EC4Y 8AA
17 October 2017
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Nine people are on trial at Worcester Crown Court, accused of being part of a major drugs network.
John Butterfield QC of No5 Barristers’ Chambers is prosecuting the case, and told the jury that the defendants conspired to bring tens of thousands of pounds worth of cocaine into Worcester from Liverpool.
The jury was shown covert police surveillance footage of one of the defendants allegedly dropping off a consignment of cocaine at the home of one of his co-conspirators.
The trial continues.
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Ogier in Guernsey has advised The Prudential Insurance Company of America (PICA) on Guernsey law matters in relation to a £1.7bn longevity risk transfer by the pension fund of Marsh & McLennan Companies, MMC UK Pension Fund.
The longevity risk transfer of £3.4bn in total, covering approximately 7,500 pension fund members, was completed with PICA and Canada Life Reinsurance ultimately reinsuring an equal share of the risk.
The Ogier deal team who advised PICA was led by partner, Bryon Rees and senior associate, Michelle Watson Bunn.
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Ogier has advised long standing client Deutsche Bank on the sale of the corporate services business of Deutsche Bank’s Global Transaction Banking division to Vistra.
Ogier provided Jersey and Cayman Islands corporate, regulatory and employment law advice to the seller as part of the acquisition.
The team was led by partner Matthew Shaxson, based in Ogier’s Jersey office along with Angus Davison, James Heinicke, James Lydeard and Tommy Tuohy in the Cayman Islands. Matthew was assisted by a team in Jersey which included Michael Little, Katherine Neal, Anna Cochrane and Daniel Read.
Allen & Overy LLP acted as lead counsel to the seller.
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Rodrigo Esteves de Oliveira, Public Law practice partner, lectured at the 4th Public Procurement Post-Graduate Course of CEDIPRE – Centre for Regulatory and Public Law Studies.
The partner spoke in the Public Procurement Procedures course and develops the subject “Main Principals of Public Procurement ”
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Linklaters has boosted its New York capital markets practice with the hire of a team from Mayer Brown, led by partner Doug Donahue.
Donahue’s exit comes just over a year after he joined Mayer Brown from Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, where he worked for 12 years. He will be joined by counsel William Liu and associate Raha Brown.
Donahue is an OTC derivatives lawyer who represents both buy and sell-side institutions, including dealers, banks, and hedge funds, in connection with the development, structuring, negotiation and documentation of a wide variety of financial products.
Linklaters capital markets head Michael Voisin said: “Doug has an excellent reputation in the New York market and is a welcome addition to the team. Linklaters has an established global capital markets practice, renowned for its derivatives law capabilities; Doug’s arrival significantly enhances our U.S. and global capabilities.”
This is the first high-profile hire for the firm since appointing corporate partner Tom Shropshire as head of the global US practice following the retirement of US head Scott Bowie halfway through his four year mandate.
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Ahead of her session at the In-house Counsel as Business Partner conference on what good looks like for the in-house team, Halebury co-founder and chairwoman Janvi Patel talks to The Lawyer about efficiency and building the law department of tomorrow.
This is a subject I think about a great deal and have actually written a chapter on this topic, in a book titled: ‘Building the Law Department of Tomorrow’.
The unbundling of legal services over the last 10 years has significantly disrupted the market and due to this disruption, the operating and service delivery structure for law departments has and will have to change and evolve. It is important to note that for different law departments and different businesses, that structure will vary considerably.
The skills that will be required and valued will also differ between different law departments and businesses. However, I strongly believe that legal project management is a key skill that will be required for lawyers, not just in private practice, but in in-house teams as well.
I could say technology, consolidation, greater innovation, but actually my one big prediction is greater diversity and inclusion. The figures on diversity within the legal profession, especially at the senior end of the market, are still not good enough. Even when you look at the NewLaw market, although it is fantastic to see so much diversity within our legal teams, there are only a handful of female founders and very few who are from minority groups. I would love to see greater diversity and inclusion at all levels and in all areas of the legal services market.
Although we have far to go, I think we are on the right track and we are approaching the issue from many angles. For example, NewLaw models are enabling people to work on flexible basis, which means that many do not have to chose between their family and their career.
This means that the supply of diversity is available. From the buyer side, it is also important to note that many buyers of legal services are demanding greater diversity from their external legal teams. There is no one solution, but together we can make a difference.
I think there are a two key factors. Firstly, many law departments are still working out what their team spend their time on. This might sound surprising, but many in-house teams are also yet to implement legal e-billing systems which help them analyse and monitor their external team. Without understanding your team’s requirements or your external spend, it is hard to understand which technology would be most useful.
Secondly, “nobody likes change” as the saying goes, and this never holds truer than in the case of many lawyers. To undertake technology changes within a law department, heads of legal and GCs need to help lawyers change their mindset so that they embrace change, but also (as the question above refers to), they should not be worried about technology.
I am not sure disruption is a “a ticking time bomb” – that sounds pretty drastic. Although I think the uberisation of the legal profession is already underway, I do not think it is accurate to say that the whole profession is being uberised. Uberisation is just taking place in certain parts of the legal market just as Uber is just one part of the transportation market.
For example, although we at Halebury might be considered to be part of the gig economy, we are not part of the “Uberisation”. We are not an automated platform, but a flexible, bespoke model for both clients and lawyers at the senior end of the market.
I think technology that enables commercial and legal teams to allocate projects and then to project manage will really revolutionise the legal industry, as it will ensure better efficiency and collaboration between the various functions and suppliers.
I always wanted to be a travel writer. However, if I was advising my 21 year old self, I would have told me to work with an NGO within women’s rights or children’s rights – helping those who have the least amount of power within our society.
Janvi Patel is one of the 60+ speakers making up this year’s stellar speaker line-up at In-house Counsel as Business Partner on the 6-7 of November. For more information on the summit, a copy of the agenda, or to enquire about tickets to attend, please contact Kenan Balli on +44(0) 20 7970 4017 or kenan.balli@centaurmedia.com
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Cembra Money Bank AG (Cembra) signed an agreement to acquire EFL Autoleasing AG (EFL) from Auto-Interleasing AG. EFL is a well established auto lease and auto loan financing company based in Winterthur (Switzerland). At the end of June 2017, EFL had approx. CHF280m auto lease and loan receivables outstanding. The combined auto lease and loan business of Cembra will have net financing receivables of CHF1.9bn.
Bär & Karrer acted as legal adviser to Cembra in this transaction. The team included Thomas U. Reutter, Daniel Heiniger, Daniel Raun, Sandro Fehlmann and Stefanie Walch (all M&A), Rashid Bahar and Martin Peyer (Regulatory) as well as Laura Widmer and Lukas Bründler (Employment).
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Ogier’s Guernsey team has won top tier rankings for financial, corporate and investment funds advice in the latest IFLR 1000 Directory.
The 2018 edition of the independent directory confirms that the team has maintained its leading position across the practice areas – and has named Practice Partner Advocate Marcus Leese as a “Market Leader” for banking and finance law advice.
The directory recognises partners Christopher Jones and Bryon Rees as “Highly Regarded” and managing associate Andrew Munro as a “Rising Star” in Guernsey.
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Ogier partner Kate Hodson has been shortlisted for the Euromoney Legal Media Group Asia Women in Business Law Awards 2017.
Kate, a private equity specialist who became Ogier’s youngest partner in 2015 at the age of 34, is one of four nominated for the Best in Offshore category.
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António Andrade, Intellectual Property practice partner, and Sara Nazaré, senior associate of the same practice, participate at the 2017 AIPPI World Congress (International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property) in Sydney.
The AIPPI is one of the largest world organizations dedicated to Intellectual property, and one of the most renown, that gathers over 9000 experts in the sector from over 125 countries.
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The Baloise Group has successfully placed a CHF300m perpetual subordinated bond, first callable in June 2023 (coupon until first call date: 1.75%) and a CHF200m dated subordinated bond with final maturity in 2048, first callable in June 2028 (coupon until first call date: 2.20%).
Walder Wyss acted as legal counsel to the Baloise Group on this transaction. The team was led by Markus Pfenninger(Partner, Banking and Finance) and included Theodor Härtsch (Partner, Banking and Finance), Maurus Winzap(Partner, Tax), Ramona Wyss (Managing Associate, Banking and Finance) and Valentin Wiesner (Associate, Banking and Finance).
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Paulina Przewoźnik has joined the employment team of Wolf Theiss Warsaw. The appointment of Paulina comes as Wolf Theiss looks to bolster its team providing employment-related advisory services to Poland’s growing business services sector.
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PwC Legal head Shirley Brookes is to stand down from her role, handing over the reins to partner Ed Stacey.
Brookes has been head of PwC’s legal services since 2013 and has been a partner at the accountancy firm since 1998.
She will hand over leadership of PwC Legal to the group’s head of employment Ed Stacey. Stacey joined PwC as a director in 2001 from the in-house department of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He worked at legacy Theodore Goddard and trained at CMS Cameron McKenna.
Brookes, who will remain a partner at PwC, has led the Big Four’s legal arm through several years of expansion. She appeared in The Lawyer’s Hot 100 in 2016.
Last year, PwC reported growth in UK revenue of 24 per cent from £48.5m to £59.9m. When it was granted an ABS licence in January 2014, turnover totalled £35.6m.
In 2016, PwC Legal was also fully integrated into PwC UK, transforming the accountancy firm into a multi-disciplinary practice.
The integration of its UK legal and accountancy entities completed in October last year following a two-year process.
It also obtained the approval from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to allow PwC to become the owner of PwC Legal.
Despite the growth, there have been signs that PwC’s substantial UK law firm auditing business may have been affected as a result of the firm’s souped-up focus on the UK legal services market.
A growing number of firms told The Lawyer they have either moved away from using the Big Four accountant as their auditor in favour of its competitors or are considering a rethink.
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By Keith Schilling
In 1976 Thames TV broadcast a six-part drama series called “Rock Follies” about a three-girl rock group. The album soundtrack of the series went to number one in the album charts and the series won plaudits for its originality as well as three BAFTA awards, one of which was for “Best Drama Series”.
This was ironic since, as events were later to prove, the entire format had been plagiarised from a three-girl rock group known as “Rock Bottom’ and their composer/manager.
Two years before the broadcast of Rock Follies the claimants, Annabel Leventon, Gaye Brown, Diane Langton and Donald Fraser had verbally pitched their idea for a TV series to Thames TV. The idea was for a three-girl rock group made up of girls of very different character and social background with well-established careers in show business, showing how the group was formed and the experiences of the girls as a group interwoven with their contrasting lives.
After initially expressing interest, Thames TV decided to proceed with their own TV series and to cast different actresses for the roles in the all-girl rock group. Enter Julie Covington, Rula Lenska and Charlotte Cornwell. “Rock Bottom” had metamorphosised into “Rock Follies”. The group sued Thames TV, the scriptwriter and producer for breach of confidence. No claim had ever succeeded in breach of confidence in respect of the theft of an oral literary or dramatic idea.
Thames TV argued that there was no right of property in an idea and that ideas, particularly oral ones, were not protectable in law. They said there was “no copyright in an idea”. Copyright had, after all, developed to protect the expression of ideas in a protectable format (for example in writing) and not ideas, as such.
An idea, they said, was ephemeral and something so subject to contradictory recollection as an oral idea should not be protectable at all. Added to this there was a dispute as to whose ideas were in play, the scriptwriter in particular claiming that the scripts were derived from ideas he himself had originated.
During the eight-week trial that ensued in the summer of 1982, dozens of witnesses in the theatre and television industries gave evidence. Every one of them agreed that if he or she received an idea from another, it would be wrong to make use of it without the consent of the communicator. The judge found on the facts that the idea was that of Rock Bottom’s and that Thames TV had used it in making Rock Follies in breach of their obligation of confidence towards them. In doing so he made new law and gave effect to the moral obligation, or usage, that all the witnesses had testified to, that confidential ideas can only be used with consent.
Since that judgment and the surrounding publicity there has been no English reported case of breach of confidence in an oral idea for a television programme. That is not to say that plagiarism of ideas has ceased. Undoubtedly it has not. But with the judicial recognition that idea theft is unlawful as well as a breach of an accepted code in the theatre and TV industries it is to be hoped that the incidence of flagrant plagiarism of literary or dramatic ideas has been curtailed by the Rock Bottom case.
Keith Schilling is chairman and senior partner of Schillings. The story of the real Rock Follies and of the subsequent High Court trial in London is told in Annabel Leventon’s memoir The Real Rock Follies: The Great Girl Band Rip-Off of 1976
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Three Eversheds Sutherland partners have put themselves forward for the role of UK chairperson in the race to succeed incumbent Paul Smith.
It is understood that joint head of energy and infrastructure Rob Pitcher, head of financial services Pamela Thompson and Manchester senior partner and head of commercial disputes Michael Clavell-Bate have put themselves forward for the role.
The election process will begin soon, with the successful candidate taking on a four-year term starting on 1 May 2018.
Environmental partner Smith was elected to the role of chairman in December 2013 and has been with the firm since 1984. He began his tenure as chairman effective from 1 May 2014 with his achievements at firm including leading the relationship with DuPont for over 10 years.
Smith has chosen not to run for the position again.
At the time, Smith said: “I am honoured to have been selected as Eversheds chairman and am very much looking forward to taking up the role next year and working with the executive team to ensure that our strategy is implemented and playing my part in making Eversheds even more of a worldwide success in the future.”
The role of chairman concerns the LLP side of the firm which includes the UK, France, Germany, the Middle East and a handful of its Asia Pac offices.
The international direction of Eversheds Sutherland is led by co-CEOs Mark Wasserman and Lee Ranson, who replaced Bryan Hughes as legacy Eversheds CEO last year, with support from international managing partner Ian Gray.
Gray was the first partner appointed to the role in 2015 after leading the litigation team from 2007 to 2015, and was replaced by Paul Worth.
Eversheds Sutherland declined to comment.
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As part of The Lawyer’s Black History Month series Tobi Rufus, executive director in the legal department at Goldman Sachs International, talks about his experience.
What’s your background? Did you always want to be a lawyer and how did you first enter the profession?
I grew up in East London, attended a local comprehensive school until the age of 16, followed by A levels at a Further Education college in Essex. I then took a gap year working in the City for a stock broker and a fund management company. Then came law at Hertford College, Oxford and I stayed in Oxford for the LPC. I trained and qualified at A&O.
Coming from a Nigerian family, I was constantly told the options open to me were a career in law, medicine or accountancy. As I don’t like the sight of blood and prefer constructing an argument to numbers, I chose law. After my GCSEs I took the yellow pages and called all of the local solicitors asking for summer work as an office junior, so that I could get an insight to the profession.
On something like the 150th call I got offered an office junior summer job at a conveyancers’ paying £2.50 per hour, I took it and I never looked back. That was followed by mini pupillages, my gap year and my university holidays working in the legal and operations team at two large investment banks (which helped me fund my degree) as well as vacation schemes at law firms.
I got several training contract offers at the end of my second year of university but chose Allen & Overy as I really liked the culture of the firm and its reputation spoke for itself.
When you were first attempting to enter the legal profession, did you feel any sense of trepidation because of the reputation of the profession as white and middle class? What were your preconceptions and how did they compare to the reality of practice?
If I am being honest, no I did not; my family had installed a confidence in me that I could do anything I put my mind to. Having worked in the City already and studied at Oxford I really didn’t have any fears or preconceptions. This was again confirmed when I undertook further mini pupillages and took part in vacation schemes.
Have you ever felt that your background has hindered you in any way?
Far from it, it has given me a different perspective that others have not. Being Nigerian helped when I was developing A&O’s Africa practice on the ground in Lagos – understanding those cultural niceties. Been able to relate to students from non-traditional backgrounds that I have mentored has gone a long way to building trust with them. Having had to interact with a diverse range of people throughout all parts of my life (student politics in East London is not the same as student politics at Oxford) has developed my networking skills.
Tell us a little bit about your role now, and how you got there…
I am an Executive Director at Goldman Sachs and the dedicated private lending lawyer for EMEA and Asia at the firm. At Goldman Sachs, I co-head the Firmwide Black Network Europe Recruiting Pillar as well as the legal department’s Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust working group.
Prior to joining Goldman Sachs in September 2014, I trained at Allen & Overy where I was then a Senior Associate specialising in General Lending and Leveraged Finance, with particular focus on Africa and other emerging markets as a senior member of the Africa Group. While at Allen & Overy I was seconded to Citi in London as well as Standard Chartered Bank in both Lagos and Johannesburg and spent time in A&O’s s Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam and Budapest offices.
What advice would you give to students attempting to enter the profession, and young lawyers from a BAME background?
I would say seek out opportunities and work hard to get that practical experience. Do your research and leverage your network. As to those young lawyers from a BAME background – work hard to show you are as good – no, better than – your non BAME peers
Do you have a legal role model? If yes, who and why? What’s the most valuable lesson they ever taught you?
Lord Denning – who always thought outside the box.
Clients are now increasingly demanding diversity of their law firms. What are your own feelings on this? Is it a fair thing to ask of firms and will it reap rewards?
I am now a client and in that role it’s a must. I don’t want homogenous lawyers with homogenous advice, I want different perspectives to go into every piece of work I receive and diversity allows for that. At Goldman Sachs one of our business principles is “For us to be successful, our men and women must reflect the diversity of the communities and cultures in which we operate. That means we must attract, retain and motivate people from many backgrounds and perspectives. Being diverse is not optional; it is what we must be.” Therefore rightly we expect the same of our service providers.
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Ulmer & Berne is one of the US Midwest’s most influential law firms. In late 2008, they engaged Aderant to automate the client and matter intake processes. Historically, the procedure for accepting new clients and matters was an entirely manual, paper-based process, which consisted of assembly of documents, signatures, approvals, and conflict check clearances with multiple steps, flowing through many individuals and departments.
Ulmer & Berne decided to automate its client and matter intake processes using Aderant Expert File Opening, a next-generation application that utilises Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation technology to help firms improve effciency, streamline approvals, and reduce errors associated with manual data entry throughout the client and matter opening process.
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Ogier’s Jersey team has been named in the top tier for financial, corporate and investment funds advice in the latest IFLR 1000 Directory.
The 2018 edition of the independent directory has promoted the investment funds team to the top rank and named 12 of Ogier’s Jersey team as “Recognised Lawyers” across the practice areas.
The guide recognises ten Ogier Partners as “Highly Regarded”: Raulin Amy, Richard Daggett, Simon Dinning, Katrina Edge, Simon Felton, Emily Haithwaite, Niamh Lalor, Bruce MacNeil, Daniel Richards and Simon Schilder.
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Macedonian lawyers cooperating with Karanović & Nikolić advised Central Asia Metals (CAML) in the acquisition of Lynx Resources, which operates the SASA zinc-lead mine in Macedonia. UK-based CAML agreed to purchase a 100% interest in Lynx Resources from Orion Co-investments III and Fusion Capital for EUR 340 million, making it the new owner of one the largest zinc, lead and silver mines in Europe.
The services performed by the team lead by Veton Qoku included a due diligence of the SASA mine, as well as conducting the merger filing process.
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