Good afternoon,
Sidley Austin is sponsoring the LA28 Olympics as Big Law leans harder into sports work, Sullivan & Cromwell added a New York tax partner, and Freshfields pulled its continental offices into a single EU Connect platform while law firms told Anthropic its legal-AI pitch fell flat.
On the client side, EQT agreed to take Qiagen private for €10.8 billion and CVC weighed a Verisure buyout, even as investors questioned the AI buildout, S&P Global flagged hidden hyperscaler debt, and a New Mexico judge hit Meta with a $25 billion privacy penalty.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Buchalter add Private Funds talent in Dallas; Sullivan & Cromwell adds NY tax partner Vivek Ratnam; Freshfields launches EU
Connect across continental Europe
-Sidley Austin sponsors LA28 as Big Law builds sports practices; Anthropic's legal-AI
pitch disappoints firm leaders
-EQT takes Qiagen private for €10.8B; CVC explores Verisure buyout a year after its
IPO
-ILPA presses scrutiny of continuation-vehicle “sweetheart deals”
-AI-infrastructure confidence wavers; S&P warns of hidden hyperscaler debt; Meta
adds nonvoting stock to fund AI
-Meta hit with $25B New Mexico privacy penalty; Getty Images files Chapter 11
-10-year Treasury tops 5%, French yields hit a 2002 high, mortgages near 7.4%
-Watch: Anthropic IPO, Blackstone earnings, FOMC, UK budget
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Buchalter welcomed Scott Murray a partner and Chair of Private Funds in Dallas. Murray joins from Greenberg Traurig.
Sullivan & Cromwell hired tax partner Vivek Ratnam into its New York office.
What today’s moves tell us: firms keep paying up for senior tax and finance talent even as overall hiring cools, with elite New York shops deepening the benches that anchor their most profitable work.
Check our Rolodex newsletter delivered on Monday at 7:30 am for a weekly overview of the lateral market and executive moves.
Operations and Strategy
Firms are spending on brand, platform and technology to win clients, while holding a firm line on data security and vendor terms.
Sidley Austin said it will sponsor the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the latest sign of Big Law chasing the sports industry for team-sale and stadium work. The marketing push has limits: Cooley secured a private box for Game 1 of the WNBA Finals, but conflicts make firms wary of backing individual teams the way legal-tech startups Harvey and Legora now do.
Freshfields is pulling its continental European offices into a single offering, EU Connect, led by Konrad Gröller. The firm is betting on its established European footprint as US rivals expand across the region and a wave of its own European partners departs.
Legal-tech choices are getting sharper. Firm innovation leaders left a meeting with Anthropic's head of Claude for Legal unimpressed, citing privacy and data terms and thin training support; 44% of firms are using or testing Claude, but only 7% have fully rolled it out, even as Legora raised $550 million at an $8.8 billion valuation. On the risk side, Seyfarth Shaw escaped a proposed class action over a breach affecting more than 56,000 people.
Practices
Private Equity and Private Credit
Sponsors are deploying into take-privates and reaching for ways to hold assets longer, a sign dealmakers still see value in discounted public companies even with financing expensive. Scrutiny of fund structures is rising at the same time, steering general counsel and fund-formation teams toward conflicts and disclosure work.
Selected Press:
EQT agreed to buy German diagnostics group Qiagen for €10.8 billion including debt, alongside the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and CPP Investments, at €46.50 a share — about a 40% premium — with Qiagen’s boards backing the deal unanimously.
CVC is exploring taking Swedish home-security group Verisure private about a year after Hellman & Friedman listed it at a €13.7 billion valuation; the shares trade roughly 30% below their IPO price.
The Institutional Limited Partners Association urged governance committees to challenge continuation-vehicle "sweetheart deals," which made up about a fifth of buyout exits last year.
Apollo Global Management pitched its $2.6 billion financing of the New York Yankees ownership as "AI-resilient leisure," as redemption fears ripple through the $1.8 trillion direct-lending market.
London Stock Exchange Group neared a $3.5 billion deal to buy credit-data firm Octus from Permira; Thoma Bravo revived a sale of J.D. Power.
Capital Markets and AI Finance
Doubts about the AI buildout are moving from equities into credit, and higher yields are gumming up new issuance. Private credit has sold itself as the flexible money for exactly this kind of market, which is why boards and finance teams are leaning on structuring, disclosure and financing-contingency advice rather than straightforward syndication.
Selected Press:
Investor confidence in AI infrastructure is wavering as revenue projections lag the trillions committed to data centers; several IPOs were shelved and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index logged an eight-day losing streak.
S&P Global warned the six largest US hyperscalers — set to spend more than $7 trillion through 2030 — likely carry more AI-linked debt than disclosed, with negative free cash flow until at least 2027.
Surging yields drove the biggest run of debt-sale delays this year, and tech credit-default swaps hit fresh highs.
Meta will create a new nonvoting share class to fund AI capex without diluting Mark Zuckerberg’s control, after reporting record third-quarter revenue of $64.6 billion.
Privacy, Enforcement and Restructuring
A record state privacy verdict and fresh sanctions show regulators and plaintiffs testing new theories against large companies, keeping litigation, compliance and restructuring teams busy for corporate clients.
Selected Press:
A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion over Cambridge Analytica-era data practices after a jury found more than 43 million violations; Judge Francis Mathew cut a calculated $219.5 billion to $25 billion, with 15% annual interest.
The Treasury Department sanctioned participants in Iran’s “shadow fleet,” including a Greek law firm, widening sanctions and export-control exposure for cross-border shippers and advisers.
Getty Images filed for Chapter 11 and plans to go private after its Shutterstock merger collapsed under heavy debt and AI competition.
Where the Work Sits
***
Recent credit scares have tended to begin as funding and redemption problems rather than defaults, and today’s cluster fits that mold — Apollo marketing “AI-resilient” private credit, tech credit swaps at new highs, and S&P’s hyperscaler-debt warning. That keeps the first calls flowing to liability-management, creditor-rights and fund-disclosure teams in New York and London.
The European take-private wave is the clearest source of new deal mandates: EQT’s Qiagen purchase and CVC’s interest in Verisure put cross-border M&A, acquisition finance and merger-control desks to work, with the premium matters sitting where sponsors must price discounted public companies and clear several regulators at once.
ILPA’s push on continuation vehicles turns a routine exit route into fiduciary-duty, conflicts and disclosure work for funds lawyers advising both sponsors and limited-partner committees.
Meta’s New Mexico penalty and the Iran shadow-fleet sanctions point to privacy-litigation defense, state attorney-general engagement, and sanctions and export-control compliance as steady sources of high-end matters for corporate clients.
Global Markets
Rising yields and energy-driven inflation are reshaping what boards and sponsors believe they can finance.
Dealmakers and fund managers are positioning for a higher-for-longer rate backdrop: executives are weighing financing windows as the 10-year Treasury holds above 5% and mortgages near 7.4%, while sponsors eye discounted European assets. The market has seen this setup in the past: when financing stays costly, buyers hunt listed companies trading below their IPO price, which points toward more take-private and acquisition-finance work. Decision-makers are also watching political risk in France and energy costs tied to the US-Iran conflict.
Selected Press:
10-year Treasury yields cleared 5% and US interest costs hit a record $1 trillion; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shifted to touting Treasuries’ total return.
French 10-year yields hit 5%, the highest since 2002, as Paris banned some protests amid budget strain.
UK inflation rose to 3.5%, an 11-month high, keeping a Bank of England rate hike in play.
Ken Griffin said AI is “almost certainly” in a bubble, while Bessent played down systemic AI risk behind closed doors.
Stories to Watch
Anthropic IPO (expected November) — a read on legal-AI adoption and a test for a crowded capital-markets calendar.
Blackstone earnings (today) — a gauge of PE fundraising, redemptions and private-credit health.
FOMC meeting (next week) — the rate path with the 10-year above 5% and inflation climbing.
UK Budget — Chancellor John Healey’s first budget, pitched at cutting business costs and regulation.
EQT–Qiagen and CVC–Verisure — regulatory and financing steps that will test the European take-private wave.
US midterms (November) — potential market volatility and policy shifts for clients to price in.
That’s the rundown. See you next where law meets the markets.
-The BigLaw Markets Team
*DISCLAIMER: BigLaw Markets analyzes publicly available information, filings, press releases, and news stories published by reputable media sources to deliver content that highlights demand for legal services. Certain production processes may be supported by proprietary AI tools and are subject to human editorial judgement and review.
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