The online contracting tool, called Swiftagree, is the firm’s first technology product launch following its April merger, and is said to precede a number of other offerings it will launch this year. BCLP partner Barry Gross and the firm’s legal technologist Bruce Braude developed the concept.

Swiftagree aims aim to increase the efficiency of contract procedures by ensuring parties need only agree on negotiable points of a contract before finalising the negotiation through the platform. It is focused on English law contracts, though is expected to scale to contracts governed by US law.

The firm claim the start-up will ensure a contract is unbiased, and reduce the adversarial nature of traditional contract negotiations as only a few key terms are up for negotiation. The cost is unspecified for broader agreements, but an NDA is £5.

Braude commented on the launch: ‘Swiftagree combines legal and technology trends to create a proposition that delivers material benefits to clients. We believe there is significant potential to further broaden its application and technology capabilities as we progress.’

The start-up will be based internally with a team working within the firm, however external assistance has been given by Surely Group, a provider of technology platforms. Gross believes developing the start-up differs from incubation models seen at other firms, which focus on including third party companies within a law firm’s space.

Gross told Legal Business the firm had been working on the tool for months: ‘This a home-grown BCLP concept. As is always the case with software development, it takes a bit of time.’

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From July 2018, new joiners to the firm will benefit from an additional £2,000 to their maintenance account – a 25% increase from the £8,000 trainees from previous cohorts were given to cover living expenses.

Those receiving the increased sum will have to complete an accelerated version of the LPC at The University of Law and conclude the course in seven months.

Kirkland & Ellis now joins large firms including Allen & Overy, Hogan Lovells and Slaughter and May who similarly boosted their LPC grant to five figures earlier this year.

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Recent big-ticket deals characterising the market include US tech private equity player Silver Lake’s proposed £2.2bn buyout of ZPG – the parent company of UK property site Zoopla – Cinven’s disposal of its Ufinet Spanish fibre-optic business and the $816m London listing of Avast, the Prague-headquartered cybersecurity heavyweight.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer celebrated a double victory, cropping up on both the Cinven disposal and the ZPG deal. The team, led by partners Adrian Maguire, Victoria Sigeti, Armando Albarrán and Javier Monzón, advised long-standing client Cinven on a deal which saw the private equity firm’s fifth fund sell Ufinet Spain, its Spanish fibre network operator, to a consortium led by Paris-headquartered infrastructure investor Antin Infrastructure Partners.

Herbert Smith Freehills advised Antin with a team lead by Madrid-based corporate partner Pablo García-Nieto, with support from UK-based partner Heather Culshaw. A Madrid-based Clifford Chance team advised the Cinven management. The deal also sees Cinven’s fifth fund sell Ulfinet International, the Latin American operations, to the sixth Cinven fund.

Ufinet provides fibre infrastructure and transmission services to telecom operators in Spain and international markets, with a fibre network spanning more than 66,800 kilometres across two continents. Cinven had acquired Ufinet in June 2014 from Gas Natural Fenosa (GNF), the largest integrated gas and electricity provider in Spain, for €510 million.

Freshfields also won a high-profile mandate advising ZPG plc, the target of Silver Lake’s proposed £2.2bn buyout, with a team led by partners Mark Austin and Piers Prichard Jones. Partners Alice Greenwell and Rod Carlton advised on employment and competition matters respectively.

The deal renews an existing relationship, after the Magic Circle firm advised ZPG on its 2014 initial public offering (IPO). Silver Lake was advised by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, with a team led by M&A partner and Freshfields alumni Ben Spiers, also featuring London partner Clare Gaskell and New York-based partner Michael Wolfson.

Proskauer Rose partner Liam Arthur advised Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, which is taking a minority stake in the company. Corporate partner Iain Wagstaff at Linklaters advised Canadian pension fund PSP Investments, which is also taking a minority share.

The acquisition – done through a scheme of arrangements which are subject to customary conditions including FCA and European Commission approval – is set to close in the next few months.

ZPG owns and operates UK property brands including Zoopla, uSwitch, Money, PrimeLocation and SmartNewHomes, as well as supplying property data and software providers with products including Hometrack, Calcasa, TechnicWeb, Ravensworth, Alto, Jupix, ExpertAgent, PropertyFile and MoveIT.

White & Case meanwhile has scored a repeat mandate to advise Avast on its premium listing on the London Stock Exchange, a tech float valued at US$816.6 million.

The team was co-led by London partners Ian Bagshaw, Jonathan Parry and Jill Concannon and also included partners Guy Potel, Steven Worthington, Prabhu Narasimhan, Justin Wagstaff and Prague-based partner Jan Andrusko.

The offer, which priced at 250 pence per share, includes gross primary proceeds of around US$200 million and represents 25.3% of the shares in Avast. The mandate is the result of a long-standing relationship, Bagshaw having also led the White & Case team which advised Avast on its $1.3bn acquisition of AVG Technologies in 2016.

In a double win for US high-flyers in the City, Latham & Watkins is advising the underwriters with a team led by London corporate and capital markets partners James Inness and Brett Cassidy.

White & Case’s Parry told Legal Business: ‘Two US heritage firms on a premium London listing of this size is something of a watershed. There is no longer an automatic default to the Magic Circle. The deal is a real endorsement of London as an attractive destination for big tech IPOs. That this IPO launched successfully in such a choppy market is a real achievement for Avast.’

Bagshaw said: ‘Our relationship with Avast has gone from strength-to-strength in recent years. We advised the company on a number of key transactions, including its US$1.3bn acquisition of AVG, the initial private equity investment by Summit Partners in 2010, the minority investment by CVC Capital Partners in 2014 and its recent acquisition of Piriform. Advising Avast on a London IPO of this magnitude and strategic significance has been hugely exciting.’

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The firm announced today (14 May) that Allen & Overy’s (A&O) global head of IP Nicola Dagg has quit the firm to join the London office of the newly-crowned world’s largest grossing firm.

The well-regarded litigator will leave A&O after 12 years. Her practice focuses on patent litigation and breach of confidence disputes, particularly in technologically advanced matters.

Kirkland’s chairman Jeffrey Hammes said her experience ‘is quite complementary to our existing practice and will be particularly useful to our life sciences and technology clients as they defend their intellectual property around the world’.

Her hire comes within months of two headline laterals for Kirkland, which in March surged past Latham to become the world’s top-billing law firm.

In December last year the firm announced the hire of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer private equity star David Higgins in a landmark $10m deal, while in January this year it tapped Cravath for New York M&A playmaker Eric Schiele.

City laterals outside the transactional arena have been rarer for the US giant, although in 2015 it tapped Linklaters for UK competition chief Paula Riedel.

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Newly-appointed firms Fieldfisher and Squire Patton Boggs join Addleshaw Goddard, Pinsent Masons, Hill Dickinson, Brodies and Paris Smith for a three-year term, following a review which began last year.

The group’s head of legal operations, Helen Lowe, and head of legal and digital Peter Horsfall, led the review with procurement manager Peter McHugh. TLT and Weightmans had both previously held panel spots with the group.

A Co-op spokesperson said: ‘Following an extensive panel review, the Co-op has appointed seven law firms with a wide range of specialist knowledge and legal expertise in the areas of commercial, litigation, property and corporate matters to support its in-house legal team. They join A&O, the incumbent City firm.’

The group has five core businesses in the food, electrical, insurance, funeral care and legal services sectors, spread across 3,750 outlets. It began reviewing its panels last year around the time former Dixons Carphone group general counsel (GC) Helen Grantham replaced Alistair Asher in the top legal role. Asher, a former A&O partner, moved into a new role as director of special projects for the business.

Asher first got involved with the Co-op in spring 2013, when he was drafted in to help with the bank’s £1.5bn capital shortfall.

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Research carried out by family law firm Vardags and YouGov revealed that 76% of people believe that the element of blame currently required in order to obtain an immediate divorce should be removed. A further 52% believe that courts should encourage amicable separation.

John Oxley, barrister at Vardags said “The current laws force couples to begin their divorce in an acrimonious way, precipitating confrontation and making divorce have a worse impact than it needs to on children and families.”

And it’s not only the public that believes that a change to current divorce laws is necessary. Even President of the Supreme Court Baroness Hale supports no-fault divorce.

Currently, individuals in the UK are required to prove fault, which can be based on behaviour, adultery or desertion.

Oxley says: “The need to prove fault to obtain a divorce is rooted in mid-twentieth century morality. It does nothing to ‘protect’ marriage, but rather creates confusion and distress for those who have reached the difficult decision to end their relationship.”

Calls for no-fault divorce have intensified following the recent case of Tini Owens where a divorce petition was refused by the court for failing to demonstrate that the marriage had ‘irretrievably’ broken down. Ms Owens is due to contest the decision at the Supreme Court on 17 May 2018.

The transaction includes the acquisition of US cable giant Liberty’s Unitymedia business in Germany, as well as its UPC brand businesses across Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic, as Vodafone looks to accelerate consolidation in key markets.

Slaughter and May is advising Vodafone, with a team lead by corporate partners Roland Turnhill and Susannah Macknay, accompanied by tax partner Steven Edge, finance partner Oliver Storey and employment partner Jonathan Fenn. Jane Edwarde and Duncan Blaikie are advising on real estate and IP/IT matters respectively, and Claire Jeffs and Kerry O’Connell on competition concerns.

Magic Circle counterpart Freshfields is advising Liberty Global on the deal, in a team spearheaded by M&A partner David Sonter and IP lawyer partner David Brooks. Antitrust advice is being led by Sascha Schubert, tax advice by Peter Clements, while Jochen Ellrott is providing German corporate advice.

Freshfields’ team also includes German regulatory partners Frank Röhling and Klaus Beucher, and employment partners Alice Greenwell and Boris Dzida.

Sonter commented on the deal: ‘Telecoms consolidation around Europe has been a big thing. It’s a very fragmented market and you will continue to see more of these deals in the market.’

Latham & Watkins is advising Liberty Global on German antitrust matters, while Ropes & Gray is advising on the financing aspects of the deal in a team led by partner Jane Rogers. CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang (CMS) is advising on Hungarian and Czech legal affairs and Shearman & Sterling on the US legal aspects of the transaction.

In acquiring Unitymedia in Germany, Vodafone takes on Germany’s second-largest cable operator in what is Vodafone’s largest market. UPC Czech and UPC Hungary, meanwhile, are the largest cable operators in the respective countries, and UPC Romania the second largest cable provider there.

The deal is subject to review and approval from the European Commission, though Vodafone anticipates the purchase will be completed by the middle of 2019.

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Takeda’s recommended offer is the culmination of a drawn out takeover process which has seen Japan’s largest pharma company make multiple bids for London Stock Exchange-listed Shire over recent months.

Under the terms of the acquisition, shareholders in Shire will be entitled to receive $30.33 in cash, a deal which values the entire share capital of the company at roughly £46bn. Takeda’s acquisition is part of its strategy to expand internationally and add to its cancer, stomach and brain drug portfolios.

Linklaters advised Takeda with a team led by corporate partner James Inglis, including global chairman of corporate Matthew Middleditch and corporate partners Aisling Zarraga, Sarah Flaherty, Tom Shropshire and Hiroya Yamazaki. Japan’s Nishimura & Asahi and offshore firm Ogier also advised Takeda.

Meanwhile, Slaughters and Davis Polk & Wardwell acted for Shire. The Slaughters team included corporate partners Martin Hattrell and Christian Boney, pensions and employment partner Jonathan Fenn, competition partners John Boyce and Claire Jeffs and tax partner Dominic Robertson.

Ashurst advised Evercore, JP Morgan and Nomura as the financial advisers to Takeda with a team led by corporate partners Robert Ogilvy Watson and Tom Mercer and banking partner Tim Rennie. The acquisition will create a leading global biopharmaceutical company incorporated in Japan.

Elsewhere, CMS advised London-headquartered developer Mainstream Renewable Power on its sale to EDF’s renewables subsidiary, EDF Energies Nouvelles, of the £2bn Neart na Gaoithe offshore wind farm in Scotland. Pinsent Masons acted for EDF and Byrne Wallace provided Irish legal advice to Mainstream.

The CMS team advising the seller was led by London partners Charles Currier and Munir Hassan and included Bill Carr, Aaron Fairhurst and Alison Woods.

Meaning ‘strength of the wind’ in Gaelic, Neart na Gaoithe has a capacity of 450MW and is located in the Firth of Forth off the east coast of Scotland. The project, which is underpinned by a 15-year contract for difference (CFD) from National Grid, is slated to be operational by 2023.

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