ALMResearchBlog

M&A Rankings: Sullivan & Cromwell, Skadden are Top U.S. Firms Over Time

As reported by Legal Week, Sullivan & Cromwell and Skadden, Arps have emerged as the top U.S. law firms in European M&A over the last three years research produced for Legal Week that shows the pair have worked on the highest value of deals over the period. Sullivan ranked first in the value tables for U.K. and Europe, advising on 173 European deals worth a total value of $1.2 trillion since November 2004 and 60 deals worth a total of $357.5 billion in the U.K. The third quarter Mergermarket M&A league tables are available through the Alacra blog and show that Sullivan again led the global league by deal value, but Latham & Watkins led the global league by deal volume.

2007 Global Hedge Fund Survey

The world’s leading hedge funds managers are more concerned about attracting and retaining talented people and managing growth than anything else, according to the 2007 Global Hedge Fund Survey  “Navigating New Complexities,” published by Ernst & Young. The poll of over 100 top global hedge funds (and fund of funds) managers, collectively managing some US$900 billion in assets, shows that retaining the right people (42%) and managing growth (39%) are the highest level challenges over the next year, compared to just 9% who anticipate investing or developing in new products. Respondents were principals, chief operating officers and chief financial officers at these funds.

Patent and Trademark Office Issues Performance and Accountability Report

According to this report on Docuticker, the USPTO has just issued its FY 2007 Performance and Accountability Report. Patent quality and productivity are at historic highs, according to the USPTO press release. In 2007, patent examiners examined the highest number of applications in history—362,227, and quality compliance was at 96.5%, equaling last year’s results. In addition, patent examiner decisions were upheld by the patent appeals board 69% of the time, up from 51% in 2005.

For the second year in a row, the USPTO exceeded all of its trademark-related performance goals: a record number of applications were examined—323,527. Quality was up 97.4%. And, the average time from filing an initial trademark application to a preliminary decision was below 3 months.

Survey of Big Deals Shows Balance of Power Shifting

Nixon Peabody’s Sixth Annual MAC Survey showed that sellers were increasingly getting the upper hand, according to this report on the Legal Pad blog. “MAC” stands for “material adverse change” clauses, which are considered a bellwether of the power balance between buyers and sellers, according to the report. MAC clauses give the buyer an “out,” defining conditions under which they can walk away from a deal before it closes. The firm studied public deals in all industries that were valued at more than $100 million (with the high end at $32.9 billion); more than 400 big deals were included in the research.

Add this study to the growing trend in original industry research conducted by law firms. We reported earlier on this blog about Fulbright & Jaworski’s annual Litigation Trends Report and Herbert Smith’s recent survey of ADR policies at leading U.K. companies. If your firm has conducted industry research, let us know by emailing [email protected] so that we can share with readers.

Just Released: Report of Practice Group Management Survey

Altman Weil and ALM Research have just released a report of their survey of Law Firm Practice Group Management, which surveyed law firm leaders across the U.S. about their practice group operations and management. Key findings include the fact that, despite the time and money invested in their practice groups, more that half of law firm managing partners and executive directors surveyed rated overall practice group performance as average or worse. When asked to rate their groups on the ability to market, develop new business and cross-sell other practices, fewer than 20 percent of firm leaders rated their groups as “excellent” or “very good” on any one of those measures.

The report includes data and information about practice group structure, performance, operations, leadership, administration, and marketing. It is the first formal benchmarking survey of law firm practice group management to be published in the U.S. In addition, the report leverages the extensive expertise of Altman Weil, to provide actionable recommendations for improving and increasing the overall effectiveness of Practice Groups. The report is available through ALM Research Publishing.

The Am Law 200 Blogosphere

It’s inevitable. A new trend comes along, and someone has to then quantify it and analyze it. We love that tendency. Blogging has definitely caught on among The Am Law 200, according to Kevin O’Keefe of Real Lawyers Have Blogs. And in a recent post, O’Keefe presented an analysis of the trend. In State of the AmLaw Blogosphere, August 2007, he writes that “of the firms on the 2006 AmLaw list (the number was a few below 200, as mergers have consolidated firms since the list first published), 39 firms were blogging. From those 39 firms, we found a total of 74 blogs. 56 of these blogs were firm branded (meaning they had the firm's logo prominently displayed on the page). 18 were not branded, indicating that the lawyer was operating their blog independently of or at a distance from their firm.” Blog topics include a huge range of practice areas. A list of firms with blogs, and links to those blogs, are provided in this post.

Deal Watching

If you are a deal-watcher in a particular industry, and you know what a blog is, you should definitely sign up to get the (free) Dealscape or "Deal Watch" blog postings from The Deal Blog Network.  They have added a new feature to many of these reports - an "Executive Summary," a chronological summary of recent significant events within that particular industry. So, for instance, a recent Deal Watch: Banking report concluded with this summary, going backward in time:

06.19.07 ING goes to Turkey. 

06.12.07 With the legal legwork done, Barclays says its takeover is movign along. 

06.11.07  Atticus urges Barclays to drop ABN bid. 

06.08.07  SocGen is reportedly interested in Societe Generale. 

06.07.07  PNC picks up Yardville. 

05.31.07  Wachovia nets A.G. Edwards. 

05.30.07  RBC proceeds with takeover attempt. ABN looks to "transaction committee" for advice. 

05.21.07  UniCredit in $29.5 billion deal for Capitalia. 

05.10.07  UniCredit eyes possible targets. 

05.10.07  ABN CFO heads for the exit. 

05.07.07  ABN rejects RBC-led bid for LaSalle. 

05.04.07  BofA sues ABN. 

05.03.07  A Netherlands court blocks ABN's LaSalle sale to BofA. 

04.25.07  An RBS consortium goes after ABN. 

04.23.07  Barclays, ABN agree to tie-up, sale of LaSalle to BofA, but will the largest-ever banking deal

               overcome regulatory hurdles and rival aggression? 

04.11.07  Citigroup begins layoff campaign. 

04.09.07  Citigroup goes to Asia, again, buying Taiwan's Bank of Overseas Chinese. 

03.22.07  Does a European banking merger wave cometh? Meanwhile, Citi's latest, $13.4 billion bid for

              Nikko is still too low, one shareholder says. 

03.20.07  Barclays and ABN Amro lay out their plans for a would-be baking giant. 

03.20.07  Barclays, ABN Amro in exclusive talks. The WSJ says an $80 billion deal

              could come together in two weeks. Might their sights turn to the U.S. next? 

02.16.07  BBVA makes $9.6 billion play for Compass. 

02.02.07  Will foreign buyers make a harder play for U.S. banks in 2007? 

12.13.06  Citigroup makes a $1.51 billion buy in El Salvador, the month after leading the investment

               group that took control of China's Guangdong Development Bank with $3.1 billion. 

12.04.06  Will Barclays be the next bank to take a buyout? 

12.04.06  BoNY and Mellon team up with a $16.5 billion deal, and The Deal asks Who bought whom? 

11.20.06  BofA says it will pay $3.3 billion for U.S. Trust Corp. and Toronto-Dominion says it will pay

               $3.2 billion for the 43% of TD Banknorth it didn't already own. 

11.20.06  USA Capital Mortgage goes on the block. 

11.02.06  New York Community Bank plans $260 million deal for PennFed. 

10.20.06  Commercial banks keep trying their hand at investment banking. 

10.10.06  PNC Financial Services unveils $6 billion deal for Mercantile Bankshares Corp. 

09.27.06  Bank of Montreal pays $290 for First National Bank & Trust. 

09.19.06  Lehman Bros. will pay $210 million for Capital Crossing Bank. 

09.18.06  Sterling Financial Corp. buys Northern Empire Bancshares. 

09.05.06  Merrill says it will pay $1.3 billion to boost mortgage biz. 

08.09.06  Morgan Stanley pays $706 million for Saxon Capital and RBC heads south. 

07.20.06  National City goes to Florida, twice. 

06.01.06  Sovereign and Independence finally seal their merger agreement. 

05.25.06  Regions Financial acquires AmSouth. 

05.08.06  Wachovia says it will pay $25.2 billion for Golden West, it's largest ever acquisition. 

04.17.06  TD Banknorth picks up Interchange Financial Services.

Survey: Top Litigators

On Monday (June 18) National Law Journal published the winners of their “showcase of litigators at the top of their game.” As editor Steve Fromm puts it, “The 10 finalists were culled from scores of nominations sent from around the United States. Our basic criteria included nominees having at least one significant win — either a bench or jury verdict — within the last 18 months, and a track record of significant wins over the last several years.” The story is available online to subscribers only, though non-subscribers may sign up for a 30-day free trial here.

Notably, though 7 of the 10 top litigators came from NLJ 250 firms (Kaye Scholer, Kirkland & Ellis, Paul, Weiss, Dechert, Winston & Strawn, Steptoe & Johnson, Akin Gump) the other 3 were from much smaller firms: Chicago’s Goldberg Kohn Bell Black Rosenbloom & Moritz; Florida’s Rumberger, Kirk & Caldwell; and Dallas’s Sayles Werbner.

M&A League Tables,1st Quarter

Once again, our friends at Alacra have posted links to the mergermarket M&A league tables. Links to all tables are also available on mergermarket’s press release site. At the top of the global M&A legal advisor’s chart is McCarthy Tetrault, though Davis Polk & Wardwell leads the North America table. Freshfields captured the number one spot on both the European and Asia-Pacific league tables.

More data on corporate transactions information is available through ALM Research Online in spreadsheet format. Both the Corporate Scorecard and the Corporate Representation (Who Counsels Who) spreadsheets can be accessed by clicking on either title. Samples are available for reviewing before purchase to show fields of data included in each.

Rankings: 50 Largest Private Equity Firms

For whatever reason, The Deal didn’t include Private Equity International’s list of the world’s 50 largest private equity firms (based on direct investment) in their story, but they did include an extensive discussion of it in Dealwatch: Middle Market. Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co and Goldman, Sachs & Co top the list, according to The Deal. The 50 firms have collectively raised a total of $551 billion in equity in the last five years, PEI says, and using a 5 times leverage multiple to their equity capital raised, that translates to $2.76 trillion in buying power. But along with the heavyweights, more than a handful of middle-market-focused firms also made their way onto the list and raised billions in capital to advance their rankings.