Legal News and Views -  Asia Pacific and Beyond

A long time ago, Donald Drapkin was an associate at Cravath.  Back in the early 70s, the firm was strictly “up or out.”  We don’t know if that was the message given to Drapkin, but he left after six years as an associate, for the much more Jewish friendly upstart, Skadden. Or, he could have [...]

Exhibit A: The Goldman Bonus ‘Bloodbath’ By bloodbath, we’re talking bonuses ranging from flat to down 30 or 40%, depending on area, but at least base pay is flat, unlike… Exhibit B: Bonus Watch ’12: JPMorgan First year associate base pay down to $120 from $125, second years to $140 from $150, bonuses flat. Exhibit [...]

Peter Jackson, who looks like the hobbits he’s currently directing, also does some side project passion work advocating, through a documentary, for the release of the West Memphis Three.  Basically, three Arkansas then-teenagers who were convicted of murdering three second graders.  The convicts’ (and many of the victims’) advocates have long held that the three [...]

Wachtell’s herculean efforts to keep management in place are legendary.  Marty Lipton invented the poison pill for crying out loud. But that was 30+ years ago. Now it looks like Simpson Thacher has come up with the most-recent tool to protect management. Eliminating stockholders’ rights to take a company to court. In Carlyle Group’s pending [...]

David Kurtz left Skadden almost a decade ago, so this doesn’t qualify for the Lateral Tracker, but we always like to see our former brethren doing well. Kurtz (BA, JD Case Western Reserve), now 57, is the new global head of restructuring at Lazard. Restructuring banking is filled with former lawyers. Interestingly, one catalyst for [...]

The WSJ is surprised Rob Kindler showed up in a $68 million deal.  The head of M&A at Morgan Stanley is usually involved in much bigger deals – according to the press release announcing his hire from JP Morgan, he had worked on $200 billion worth of deals from 2000 to 2006. And of course, [...]

Ronald Barusch cites three conventional wisdoms of hostile deals: A staggered board coupled with a poison pill makes a target company effectively bulletproof against hostile attacks; Cash is king in a hostile bid (as opposed to a stock-for-stock deal); and A target’s “just say no” posture is smarter than proposing a counter-offer But his former [...]

A year ago, we wrote that Morgan Stanley’s law department was oddly structured. Frank Barron, who joined from Cravath in 2010, was the Chief Legal Officer.  Government Affairs and a few other organizations reported to him. Eric Grossman, who joined from Davis Polk in 2006, was General Counsel of the Americas, Global Head of Litigation and [...]

We’ve written a number of posts about the BigLaw-NFL connection, ranging from the groundbreaking work firms like Dewey & LeBoeuf and Weil Gotshal have done in creating the free-agency labor framework (including the most-recent litigation) to the league’s hiring of guys like former Patton Boggs partner DeMaurice Smith taking the top job at the players’ [...]

This ALD article was interesting.  Cravath Inks Two Deals in One Week for IBM. Deal #1 ($440 million acquisition of DemandTec): Cravath corporate partner George Schoen, tax partner Andrew Needham, employee benefits partner Jennifer Conway, and environmental partner Matthew Morreale are taking the lead in advising IBM on the transaction. Deal #2: In the second [...]