Good afternoon,
The first business day of September opened with a hiring wave into Washington antitrust. Sullivan & Cromwell, Quinn Emanuel, A&O Shearman, Baker McKenzie and WilmerHale all added competition partners, several straight from the FTC and DOJ. Skadden took Orrick's global banking-and-finance leader in Palo Alto, and Linklaters hired Johnson & Johnson's talc-defense chief for its New York litigation bench.
On the client side, the big story of the day is the FTC and 22 states suing Amazon over ad-auction pricing. On the markets side pressure is building up simultaneously across several important corners of the market. A global bond selloff pushed yields to their highest since 2008, with the US 10-year above 4.75% and September Fed-hike odds near two-thirds, while. Oil topped $90 as US-Iran strikes resumed.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-DC antitrust hiring wave: S&C, Quinn Emanuel, A&O Shearman, WilmerHale, and Baker McKenzie add competition partners
-Skadden takes Orrick's global banking and finance lead; Linklaters hires J&J's talc-defense chief for NY litigation
-Jackson Walker bets on Texas, eyes a best-ever $550m year; Cahill Gordon names its first chief AI officer
-FTC and 22 states sue Amazon over ad-auction manipulation, echoing Google's adtech losses
-Anthropic signs a $35bn Lambda compute deal; SLB buys data-center cooling maker Kelvion for $3.4bn
-Global bond yields hit an 18-year high; the 10-year tops 4.75% and September Fed-hike odds near 66%
-Apple accuses OpenAI of destroying evidence in a trade-secrets fight; SEC presses firms on startup-share access
-Oil tops $90 as US-Iran strikes resume and the US takes 55% of a Venezuelan oil JV
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
A&O Shearman welcomed antitrust partner Anna Kertesz from White & Case in Washington.
Baker McKenzie hired antitrust counsel Bryan Bloom from UnitedHealth in New York.
Ballard Spahr added securities-enforcement litigator Lisa Zwally from Greenberg Traurig (Delaware).
Burr & Forman brought in former federal prosecutor Catherine Crosby (Birmingham).
Foley & Lardner hired commercial litigator Dustin Greene from Kilpatrick (Raleigh).
Greenberg Traurig took ex-Meta digital-infrastructure partner Rose Schlichtmann-Prince (Washington and Miami).
Holland & Knight brought in health-policy partner Kristen O'Brien from McDermott (Washington).
Kirkland & Ellis hired litigation and investigations partner Prerak Shah from Gibson Dunn in Houston.
Linklaters aded litigator Erik Haas from Johnson & Johnson, where he led the talc-litigation defense.
Quinn Emanuel poached antitrust partner Catie Ventura from Kirkland & Ellis in Washington.
Simpson Thacher added energy and infrastructure partner Erik Elsea in Washington.
Skadden hired global banking and finance leader Zachary Finley from Orrick in Palo Alto.
Sullivan & Cromwell welcomed antitrust partner Sonia Kuester Pfaffenroth, a former DOJ antitrust official, in Washington.
White & Case hired global tax partner Andrew Carlon in New York.
WilmerHale recruited former FTC attorney Rebecca Unruh for its Washington antitrust bench.
What today’s moves tell us: Enforcement is heating up and the lateral market reflects this. The start-of-September wave sent former government antitrust lawyers into Big Law benches, and in a market where there is heightened scrutiny, the firms that build competition depth early tend to win the boardroom's hardest merger and monopolization calls.
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 splitting between scale-everywhere and depth in selected markets just as AI leadership is moving from pilot projects to the org chart.
Jackson Walker is betting on Texas rather than office count. Managing partner C. Wade Cooper expects the firm's best-ever year, saying it would be disappointing not to clear $550m in gross revenue, with headcount set to pass 530 as first-years arrive. The firm is leaning on litigation, energy, and niche work like water rights and oil-and-gas royalties while moving past a scandal over a former partner's undisclosed relationship with a judge that roiled the Houston bankruptcy bar.
The litigation model is also in play. Kirkland & Ellis and Quinn Emanuel are taking different routes into a disputes market priced on the value at stake rather than the hours booked, with Kirkland adding litigation talent and Quinn reshaping management, a reminder that the billable model is under review even at the top.
Cahill Gordon & Reindel created a chief AI strategy and innovation officer role and promoted former federal prosecutor Kelly Graves to partner to fill it. Choosing a practicing lawyer over an outside technologist signals firms want AI ownership inside the practice, not bolted on.
Practices
Antitrust and Competition
Enforcement is widening from deals to conduct and it is driving demand for competition counsel. The FTC and 22 state attorneys general sued Amazon over how it prices ad auctions, a conduct case that follows the adtech and search monopolization suits Google lost and lands on top of a pending FTC monopolization case set for trial next year. For general counsel and boards across corporate America, that mix points to more monopolization defense, more state-AG coordination, and closer scrutiny of pricing algorithms, which is exactly why firms are stacking Washington benches.
Selected Press:
FTC and 22 states sued Amazon, alleging it added charges to ad-auction bids since 2018 and concealed the practice, with advertisers said to have overpaid by tens of billions; Amazon called the claims false.
The case echoes the adtech and search suits Google lost, and adds to a separate FTC ecommerce-monopolization case expected to reach trial next year.
Activist Elliott built a stake in Air Liquide, the $125bn French industrial-gas group, setting up a governance and defense engagement.
AI Infrastructure and Deals
The AI buildout keeps generating cross-practice deal, financing, and siting work, as power and permitting remain the binding constraint. Every leg of the buildout so far has run into energy and land limits rather than capital, so this week's compute and cooling deals point less to a surprise than to the next wave of project-finance, energy-regulatory, and real-assets mandates. Dealmakers and sponsors are moving accordingly.
Selected Press:
Anthropic agreed to rent $35bn of compute from Nvidia-backed Lambda, with former bitcoin miner Hut 8 building the data center in Nueces County, Texas, days after a $45bn Nscale deal.
SLB agreed to buy data-center cooling maker Kelvion from Apollo for $3.4bn, assuming $700m of debt, with Triton selling a minority stake.
Nvidia invested $3.5bn in convertible bonds of Taiwan's MediaTek as the two deepen an AI-infrastructure tie-up.
Trump condemned data-center opposition as active construction bans topped 500, keeping siting and permitting fights front and center.
Capital Markets and IPOs
The listing window is open even as rates climb, and the calendar is bracing for a mega-IPO. Boards and their counsel are weighing timing and cross-border listing risk as issuers move before conditions shift.
Selected Press:
Shein raised $1.7bn in a Hong Kong IPO and closed flat at a $26bn market value, far below its $100bn 2022 peak after New York and London attempts stalled over labor and China concerns.
Anthropic's planned IPO, potentially matching or topping SpaceX's record $86.2bn debut, is looming over a packed post-Labor-Day listing calendar.
More PE exits and issuers are lining up: KKR-backed Wella and CVC-backed Bamboo filed to list, and India's Jio Platforms won approval for a roughly $3.9bn IPO backed by Meta and Alphabet.
The SEC pressed investment firms to prove they have real access to shares in hot startups, tightening diligence around private-market exposure.
Disputes and Restructuring
High-stakes disputes and workouts keep building across tech, consumer, and sports. The through-line is billable, high-end work for litigation, IP, and creditor-rights teams.
Selected Press:
Apple accused OpenAI of destroying evidence in their trade-secrets case, while OpenAI moved to cut Cursor's model access on Nov. 12 after SpaceX's $60bn purchase of the coding startup.
Walmart agreed to pay $50m to settle claims its pharmacies filled suspicious opioid prescriptions, with added monitoring obligations.
LIV Golf is set to file for bankruptcy after Saudi Arabia's PIF pulled funding, with BC Partners in talks to support a slimmed-down 2027 season.
Where the Work Sits
***
Amazon’s antitrust challenge is where the marquee matters are gathering. The market has seen this regime before: when enforcers move from blocking deals to attacking conduct and pricing, as the Amazon ad-auction suit and the DC hiring wave have both signaled, the work flows to monopolization defense, merger-control, and state-AG coordination for the firms that advise across corporate America.
AI infrastructure is a cross-practice engine that keeps roaring. Anthropic's Lambda compute deal, SLB's Kelvion purchase, and the politics around data-center bans send high-end matters to project finance, energy and utilities-regulatory, siting and permitting, and real-assets teams, with M&A and financing riding alongside.
Rates and credit tie the issue together. Yields at an 18-year high and PE-backed borrowers stretching maturities compress refinancing and liability-management timelines, pulling in restructuring, private-credit, and creditor-rights teams before any default arrives.
Capital markets and disputes round out the demand. A live listing calendar feeds securities and disclosure work, while trade-secrets, opioid, and sports-bankruptcy matters keep IP, product-liability, and restructuring desks busy.
Global Markets
Rate repricing and oil volatility are the dominant client variables heading into September. The biggest near-term risk in credit is often a funding problem before it is a credit-quality one, and with borrowing costs jumping again, executives and fund managers are recalculating financing timelines and refinancing plans.
Boards with energy and sanctions exposure are tracking oil, while decision-makers weigh whether to lock financing and price deals before the Fed meets.
Selected Press:
Global bond yields hit their highest since 2008; the US 10-year topped 4.75% and Japan's 10-year reached a three-decade high, with September Fed-hike odds near 66%.
Euro-area inflation quickened to a near-three-year high, cementing an expected ECB hike, as Treasury Secretary Bessent pressed Japan to raise rates.
Oil topped $90 (Brent $91.25) as US-Iran strikes resumed and the US moved to take 55% of a Venezuelan oil JV with board-veto and first-refusal rights.
Stories to Watch
US jobs report (Fri, Sept 4) - payrolls seen up 55,000 with unemployment at 4.1%; a key input to the Fed's September call.
Fed FOMC meeting (Sept 16-17) - a hike is now a live outcome after Warsh's Jackson Hole turn and the bond selloff.
ECB decision (next week) - euro-area inflation at a near-three-year high strengthens the case for a hike.
Anthropic IPO filing - expected after Labor Day; could match or top SpaceX's $86.2bn record and reset the listing calendar.
Earnings: Dell (Tue), Broadcom and HPE (Wed), lululemon and DocuSign (Thu) - reads on AI hardware and enterprise demand.
US-Iran strikes and Venezuela oil - watch energy prices and sanctions exposure for client risk.
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.
Thanks for reading!
We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
