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Davis Polk pulled the head of Skadden’s global media and entertainment group into Los Angeles, WilmerHale hired a Latham partner to build out restructuring, and Clifford Chance added the former New York Jets general counsel to its sports practice. The DOJ is also fighting to keep its DEI probe of the largest firms under seal.
On the client side, the Treasury sell-off pushed long-dated yields to 24-year highs and drove the riskiest corporate borrowers toward 17% rates. Gulf funds and private-credit managers kept pouring into the AI build-out, with SpaceX seeking $40 billion and OpenAI in talks for $30 billion, and Paramount Skydance closed its $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery takeover.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Davis Polk, WilmerHale and Clifford Chance headline a fresh run of M&A, restructuring and sports-practice hires
-DOJ moves to seal records from its DEI probe of the largest firms; litigation funders scale up
-Paramount Skydance closes its $110bn Warner Bros. Discovery takeover, now renamed Skydance
-Gulf funds and private-credit giants crowd into AI, with SpaceX ($40bn) and OpenAI ($30bn) raising
-Corporate borrowing costs jump and distressed US loans hit a post-Covid high
-Treasury yields reach 24-year highs; India hikes for the first time in nearly four years
-Cyber and privacy pressure builds: EY and Oracle breaches, smart-glasses bans, an Ofcom probe of Meta
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Davis Polk hired Glen Mastroberte, head of Skadden’s global media and entertainment group, as an M&A partner in Los Angeles; his clients have included Netflix, Ares Capital Management and the NHL, and he reunites with Jason Russell, who opened the firm’s LA office in May.
WilmerHale recruited restructuring partner Hugh Murtagh from Latham & Watkins to lead a new restructuring department and grow its ranks.
Clifford Chance added Jill Kelley, former general counsel of the New York Jets, to build its private-capital sports practice.
Holland & Knight took M&A and private equity partner Erin O’Gurek from Morgan Lewis in Philadelphia.
Morrison Foerster hired M&A partner Chris Grey as UK tech-sector lead in London, and McDermott Will & Emery added life-sciences transactions partner Seth Flaum in New York.
Squire Patton Boggs brought on public-policy principals Nick Rockwell and Chris Crawford in Washington, and Cozen O’Connor added real estate partner Carlos Rodriguez in Miami.
On the bank side, JPMorgan named former Goldman Sachs dealmaker Rob Sweeney a global chair of investment banking.
What today’s moves tell us: firms are buying transactional and restructuring firepower at once — for the deals still getting done and the workouts that follow if credit tightens. In fluid markets clients lean harder on a small set of trusted advisers, and the benches are being built to match.
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Operations and Strategy
Litigation funding is scaling, the government is tightening its grip on firm records, and the money behind legal services keeps growing.
Omni Bridgeway closed its second $1 billion fund, spread across single cases and portfolios in IP, antitrust, group claims and arbitration, and backed by fund capital rather than debt. The raise shows litigation funders pulling in investors who want returns uncorrelated to equities, a point Burford Capital made last month when it said it was entitled to $1.4 billion from a patent verdict against Apple.
The Justice Department asked a DC federal judge to keep records from its DEI probe of the country’s largest firms out of public view, keeping the administration’s scrutiny of Big Law active even where the firms are not named.
Supporting demand for the corporate, finance and disputes work that feeds the largest firms, New York trading and investment-banking firms are on pace for record 2026 profits above $90 billion, up from $65 billion in 2025.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Private Equity
Dealmaking is cooling at the edges but not stopping, and the transactions still getting signed are the ones where strategic logic outweighs the higher cost of money. Dealmakers and sponsors are closing large strategic deals and pushing portfolio companies to act, which points to steady M&A, financing and antitrust mandates.
Selected Press:
Paramount Skydance closed its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery after clearing antitrust challenges, renaming the company Skydance; RedBird Capital Partners added $4 billion of new equity.
CVC raised its take-private offer for Recordati to $11.8 billion, and McKesson with CD&R agreed to buy Option Care Health for $5.8 billion including debt.
Informa agreed to buy events business Clarion from Blackstone for $3 billion, while Emera ($10bn, Canadian Utilities) and Uber ($2.3bn, ezCater) kept strategic deal flow running.
Activist Blue Duck pressed Snap to raise capital by selling a stake in its Specs unit, and AT&T formed a fiber joint venture with BlackRock’s GIP and Canada’s CPPIB.
Capital Markets, AI Finance and Private Credit
The AI build-out is now a capital-markets and private-credit story. When banks step back and alternative lenders carry the risk, the advisory premium moves into the documentation, intercreditor terms and workout optionality, which is where fund managers and sponsors are focusing.
Selected Press:
SpaceX is seeking $40 billion in investment-grade debt led by Apollo, with Pimco among potential lenders, to buy Nvidia chips; its BBB rating opens the deal to insurers and pension funds.
OpenAI is in talks for at least $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation, with Abu Dhabi’s MGX weighing up to $10 billion and BlackRock in discussions, as Anthropic moves toward a November IPO that could raise up to $100 billion.
Companies have raised more than $1 trillion in equity this year for only the second time ever, with Citigroup leading global IPO underwriting.
Blue Owl plans a balance-sheet-light push into insurance to lock in long-term funding, even as investor withdrawals and software-loan worries weigh on private credit.
Restructuring and Special Situations
Higher-for-longer rates are starting to show in corporate balance sheets, and the stress is concentrated in floating-rate and near-maturity borrowers. For clients, that reads as more liability-management, creditor-rights and workout mandates.
Selected Press:
A surge in borrowing costs is hitting corporate America, pushing the lowest-rated companies toward 17% and leading Bank of America to cut its monthly investment-grade issuance forecast to $110 billion from $160 billion; $1.45 trillion of such debt comes due through 2030.
Deeply distressed US loans rose to their highest level since the pandemic, and the IMF flagged the growing market footprint of hedge funds.
BT bought UK rival TalkTalk out of insolvency, a deal set to wipe out about half of Ares’s roughly $270 million exposure, while Ardagh weighed a sale of its African glass business after a creditor takeover.
Regulatory, Privacy and Cybersecurity
Data breaches and platform rules are generating defense and compliance work across sectors, and the targets now include the advisers themselves. General counsel and boards are weighing breach exposure, vendor risk and tightening platform regulation.
Selected Press:
Goldman Sachs, Man Group and Tishman Speyer clients were exposed in an EY data breach tied to a Checkmarx software flaw, with the ShinyHunters group claiming responsibility; Oracle separately disclosed a 2025 healthcare breach affecting nearly 20 million people.
Governments and courts are restricting smart glasses over secret-recording concerns, with bans spreading across Australia, Norway, the English and Welsh courts and New York’s court system.
UK regulator Ofcom opened a probe into Meta over child-safety risk assessments for Instagram Instants, and Disney asked a federal court to halt the FCC’s early review of ABC station licenses as a First Amendment violation.
Where the Work Sits
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The AI build-out has repeatedly hit a constraint and then found a new pool of capital to clear it; if prior cycles are a guide, the financing layer itself is where the next wave of work sits. SpaceX’s $40 billion Apollo-led package, OpenAI’s $30 billion round and Blue Owl’s insurance push point to structured-finance, capital-markets, fund-formation and credit-ratings mandates, plus the project-finance and real estate work that data centers carry.
Gulf sovereign capital is showing up in a growing share of large US deals, from the Warner Bros. Discovery financing to regional infrastructure. That steady flow pulls mandates into cross-border M&A, fund formation and the project finance behind rail, power and digital assets.
Credit is turning defensive. Rising corporate borrowing costs, distressed loans at a post-Covid high and BT’s financed takeout of TalkTalk steer work toward liability-management, creditor-rights and special-situations teams in New York and London.
Breach response and platform regulation are a growing line. The EY and Oracle breaches, the spread of smart-glasses bans and Ofcom’s Meta probe point to incident-response, privacy, class-action-defense and compliance mandates, while litigation funders’ fresh capital keeps high-value disputes moving.
Global Markets
The bond market is still calling the tune, and an energy-driven inflation tail is the risk clients cannot hedge.
Executives and treasurers are weighing whether to lock in financing now, with long-dated Treasury yields at 24-year highs and traders already rebuilding short positions. Recent cycles have shown that funding-led squeezes surface first in the riskiest borrowers, and the move toward 17% rates for the lowest-rated names fits that pattern, keeping refinancing and restructuring advice in demand. Decision-makers are watching whether central banks outside the US keep following the Fed and whether the diesel squeeze feeds broader inflation.
Selected Press:
Ten-year Treasury yields near 5.3% and long-end yields at 24-year highs lifted the riskiest corporate rates, even as the S&P 500 closed at a record and Japan’s 10-year rose above 3% for the first time in three decades.
The Reserve Bank of India raised rates a quarter point, its first hike in nearly four years, as a near-record-low US–India yield spread and a rupee near 97 narrowed its room to maneuver.
Iran stepped up tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz as flows neared prewar levels; US diesel hit a record $6.53 a gallon, prompting Trump to ease dyed-diesel tax rules, and the IMF chief called AI, energy and debt a “risk cocktail.”
The EU prepared safeguard caps on Chinese hybrid-vehicle imports, and the US trade gap widened to a record $105.6 billion.
Stories to Watch
FOMC minutes (Wed.) — the record of September’s hike, read for how worried officials are about inflation as another move is priced out.
Central banks outside the US — after India’s surprise hike, Peru is expected to raise and Poland to hold, a test of how far the Fed is forcing hands abroad.
IMF–World Bank annual meetings (next week) — the IMF chief has flagged AI, energy and debt as the dominant risks.
US data: Michigan consumer sentiment (Fri.) and delayed inflation reads — key to the Fed’s December call amid the diesel-driven inflation tail.
Earnings: Constellation Brands and Levi’s (today), PepsiCo (Thu.), Delta and Applied Digital (this week) — consumer, travel and AI-infrastructure reads.
Brazil runoff (Oct. 25) — a political-risk event for emerging-market assets after Flavio Bolsonaro’s first-round lead.
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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