Happy Friday afternoon,
Latham & Watkins took two Freshfields dealmakers in Hong Kong, and the lateral board stayed busy: Holland & Knight, Cooley and Womble each added partners, Linklaters grabbed FIFA’s litigators from Paul Weiss. In London, Boies Schiller is rebuilding. Bradley added a Healthcare partner and launched a Retail, Digital Commerce, and Consumer Brands team.
On the client side, KKR said the outside law firms that advised it will “fully reimburse” its record $250m DOJ penalty. Texas ordered a freeze and audit of data-center grid hookups, sending clients to Norton Rose, Baker Botts and Bracewell; a federal judge ordered the Pentagon to stop blacklisting Anthropic; and Advent and Stripe walked away from a $50bn PayPal take-private. In markets, Kevin Warsh takes the Jackson Hole stage with rates on hold and inflation sticky.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Latham hires two Freshfields Hong Kong dealmakers; Holland & Knight, Cooley and Womble add partners
-Boies Schiller rebuilds London four years after its team exodus; Linklaters takes FIFA’s litigators
-KKR says outside law firms will fully reimburse its record $250m DOJ penalty
-Texas freezes and audits data-center grid hookups, driving a Big Law client surge
-Judge orders Pentagon to rescind Anthropic blacklisting on First Amendment grounds
-Advent and Stripe abandon $50bn PayPal take-private; Unilever sells Colman’s to clear the McCormick deal
-Anthropic to file for a ~$100bn IPO after Labor Day
-Warsh headlines Jackson Hole as the Fed holds and inflation stays sticky
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Latham & Watkins hired equity capital markets, private equity and M&A partners Grace Huang and Edward Freeman from Freshfields in Hong Kong.
Holland & Knight hired M&A and private equity partner Kristie Shu from Kirkland & Ellis in Los Angeles.
Bradley welcomed Gregory Bianchi to the Atlanta Healthcare team.
Cooley hired capital markets partner Julia White from Goodwin Procter in San Francisco.
Womble Bond Dickinson hired finance, bankruptcy and restructuring partner Mark Eckard in Wilmington.
Linklaters hired FIFA litigators Christopher Boehning and Daniel Levi from Paul Weiss for its sports litigation practice.
What today's moves tell us: The prize is cross-border dealmaking and specialist bench. Firms are hiring around a recovering Hong Kong deal market and stocking capital markets, restructuring and sports-litigation talent.
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 launching practices, rebuilding in markets they once retreated from, and the KKR penalty is testing who pays when antitrust filings go wrong.
Bradely announced the launch of its Retail, Digital Commerce, and Consumer Brands team. Partners Erin Jane Illman and Alexis Buese will co-lead the group bringing privacy, cybersecurity, complex litigation, and and regulatory work.
Boies Schiller is rebuilding its London office four years after a near-total team exodus, trying to convert its US litigation reputation into international work. The move is a bet that a lean, litigation-first brand can win City mandates without a full-service platform.
KKR said the outside law firms that advised it will “fully reimburse” the record $250m penalty it agreed with the DOJ over incomplete merger filings; Quinn Emanuel and Cleary Gottlieb advised KKR. Merger enforcement has repeatedly turned process and disclosure failures into headline penalties, and the fight over who pays this one moves filing-process risk onto firms and their insurers, not just the sponsor.
Practices
Energy and Projects
Texas turned from data-center booster to gatekeeper, and lawyers are the first call. Gov. Greg Abbott ordered the state’s grid operator and utility regulator to freeze and audit data-center and crypto projects waiting to connect, and partners at Norton Rose, Baker Botts and Bracewell report a surge in client calls. When the rules change weekly, clients lean harder on trusted counsel, and every deal becomes bespoke, which is exactly where siting, permitting, power-contract and regulatory mandates are forming.
Selected Press:
Texas froze and audited data-center and crypto grid connections on Gov. Abbott’s order, less than a year after he called the state the “epicenter” of data centers; AG Ken Paxton and his Senate-race opponent both want tighter rules.
Norton Rose, Baker Botts and Bracewell report a client-call uptick; Baker Botts’ Elaine Walsh said rules and timelines “seem to be changing every week,” and projects with strong site control and clear power strategy are faring best.
Litigation and National Security
A federal judge handed Anthropic a win that doubles as a template for AI companies facing government retaliation. Judge Rita Lin ordered the Pentagon to rescind its supply-chain-risk blacklisting of Anthropic, calling it unlawful First Amendment retaliation for criticizing administration policy. For general counsel, the ruling draws a line around “national security” designations and clears regulatory overhang ahead of Anthropic’s IPO. A second suit continues in Washington.
Selected Press:
A federal judge ordered the Pentagon to rescind its blacklisting of Anthropic, ruling the designation was unlawful First Amendment retaliation and a due-process violation; a second Anthropic suit proceeds in the DC circuit.
Over 100 companies including Anthropic, Google, Citadel and Visa signed an OpenAI-led call for coordinated cyberdefense of critical infrastructure such as hospitals and water systems.
M&A and Antitrust
The deal tape shows both appetite and friction, and remedies are doing the closing. Advent and Stripe walked away from a $50bn PayPal take-private and Solstice and Element scrapped a $14.5bn merger, while Unilever agreed to sell Colman’s mustard to clear its $45bn food-business merger with McCormick. Sponsors kept trading assets, a signal that dealmakers still see room to move where the antitrust path is clear.
Selected Press:
Advent and Stripe abandoned their $50bn take-private of PayPal; Solstice Advanced Materials and Element Solutions terminated a $14.5bn merger.
Unilever will sell Colman’s mustard to resolve antitrust concerns in its $45bn food-business merger with McCormick.
Apollo will buy a co-controlling stake in Atlantic Aviation from KKR at a $10bn valuation, and formed a $2bn British Columbia gas-pipeline JV with Enbridge and KKR; AQR is pursuing an appraisal-arbitrage trade in Permira and Warburg Pincus’s $8.4bn buyout of Clearwater Analytics.
Capital Markets and Governance
Issuers are lining up while federal regulators ease off. Anthropic plans to file for a roughly $100bn IPO after Labor Day and is weighing letting shareholders sell; the SEC is teeing up changes to executive-pay disclosure, and bank regulators voted to narrow confidential supervisory warnings to core financial risks. Boards and general counsel are reading a lighter federal touch even as state enforcement and private plaintiffs fill the gaps.
Selected Press:
Anthropic will file for a potential $100bn IPO after Labor Day and is considering letting shareholders sell, a break from the SpaceX playbook.
The SEC advanced a plan to modify public-company executive-pay disclosures; top bank regulators voted to narrow confidential warnings to core risks.
A judge approved Bank of America’s $72.5m settlement with Epstein victims, and ex-Barclays CEO Jes Staley testified he shared confidential JPMorgan client and deal information with Epstein.
Where the Work Sits
***
Every leg of the AI buildout has hit the same wall, power and permitting rather than capital, and Texas’s freeze is that wall arriving in the country’s busiest data-center market. The work moves to project finance, real estate, utilities regulation and power-contract teams that can move a project through the grid.
Merger control is where the high-end matters sit this week. Unilever’s Colman’s divestiture and the fight over who pays KKR’s penalty point to remedy design, second-request readiness and, increasingly, malpractice and indemnity work as firms and insurers absorb filing-process risk.
Anthropic’s win against the Pentagon opens a lane in constitutional and administrative litigation for AI companies tangling with the government, and it clears regulatory overhang ahead of a landmark listing, feeding national-security and capital-markets counsel at once.
The lateral market keeps pricing cross-border capacity. Latham’s Hong Kong hires and the capital-markets and restructuring moves elsewhere point to recruitment, conflicts and client-transition mandates as firms build around recovering Asian deal flow.
Global Markets
Chairman Warsh takes the Jackson Hole stage with rates on hold, inflation sticky, and central banks diverging. Clients are weighing a Fed that talks tough on inflation but hasn’t hiked; Chair Kevin Warsh’s keynote today is his chance to explain July’s hold, and officials remain split. In volatile, fragmented conditions like this, boards lean on a tight group of trusted advisers.
Dealmakers are positioning for firmer rates abroad as European inflation strengthens the ECB’s hike case. Clients arealso tracking the US-Venezuela oil-field talks and easing Iran tensions for the energy and financing read.
Selected Press:
Warsh headlines Jackson Hole today with the Fed on hold and FOMC members split on inflation; markets want “backward” guidance on why he skipped a July hike.
Spain and France inflation ran hotter than forecast, strengthening the case for an ECB rate hike; Japan spent a record $96.4bn on yen intervention in the past month.
The US is in talks to take a major stake in Venezuela’s oil fields as Venezuela weighs an OPEC exit; US diesel supplies hit a record low.
Trump renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America,” escalating the Canada spat, though Canadian economists told the finance minister the tariff damage should be manageable.
Stories to Watch
Warsh Jackson Hole keynote (Fri, Aug 28) - his explanation for the July hold; markets will parse it for the rate path.
Anthropic IPO filing (after Labor Day) - a potential ~$100bn listing that will test the AI IPO window.
Fed FOMC meeting (Sept 15-16) - the next rate decision after a divided committee.
Iceland EU referendum (Sat, Aug 29) - vote on restarting accession talks; a read on EU enlargement.
Texas data-center audit - how fast frozen grid projects can reconnect, and which get through.
Canada trade escalation - whether tariffs and the “Lake America” spat harden into further measures.
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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