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Skadden, Debevoise, Milbank and Willkie all stacked partner hires, Sidley Austin grabbed a former Treasury CFIUS lawyer, and Stephenson Harwood lined up a new chief executive as its Taylor Wessing merger vote nears.
On the client side, cracks spread across the AI trade as memory-chip stocks tumbled and new AI debt issuance slowed, while higher rates bit smaller private equity firms even as Blackstone booked record European exits. LSEG, Credit Agricole and MUFG chased cross-border deals, and the FBI arrested an OpenAI employee for planting a listening device.
Markets stayed tense: the IMF warned that high yields and heavy debt are trapping governments, Treasuries sold off toward multi-decade-high yields, and Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia kept Gulf risk live.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Partner hires at Skadden, Debevoise, Milbank, Willkie, Greenberg Traurig and Troutman Pepper Locke; Sidley adds a CFIUS lawyer
-Weil rebuilds Asia with a Skadden Hong Kong hire; HSF Kramer opens Milan real estate; Dentons takes a DLA Piper team
-Stephenson Harwood lines up a new chief exec as the Taylor Wessing merger vote nears
-Higher rates squeeze smaller PE firms; Blackstone posts record ~$6bn European exits; Altice creditors sue over moved assets
-LSEG eyes Octus; Credit Agricole buys IKB; MUFG targets Shriram Finance; J&J weighs an orthopedics spin-off
-Activists press Ethan Allen and Big Yellow; FBI charges an OpenAI insider; regulators scrutinize bank AI agents
-IMF flags a debt-and-yields feedback loop; US CPI lands Wednesday; Williams sees one more hike
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Sidley Austin hired Jess Sanchez, a former Treasury acting principal deputy assistant general counsel with deep CFIUS experience, into its Washington, DC office.
Skadden added a five-lawyer mass torts and product liability team from DLA Piper in Chicago, including partners Lyn Pruitt, Adria Conklin, Mary Catherine Way and David Koehler.
Debevoise & Plimpton recruited George "Chip" Nierlich, the DOJ's former acting director of antitrust litigation, into its antitrust group in Washington, DC.
Milbank hired Jarrett Doe for project, energy and infrastructure finance in Chicago from White & Case.
Willkie added litigation partner Kruti Trivedi, a former JPMorgan assistant general counsel and ex-federal prosecutor, in Chicago.
Greenberg Traurig took energy and natural resources partner Hannah Roscoe in London, and Troutman Pepper Locke hired health care litigation partners Andreas Ringstad (Philadelphia) and Debra Schreck (New York).
Weil Gotshal & Manges hired Shu Du, Skadden's sole Beijing partner, into Hong Kong to launch a capital markets practice and rebuild its Asia business, following its hire of Kirkland & Ellis private equity partner Peng Yu.
HSF Kramer launched a Milan real estate practice with a six-lawyer K&L Gates team led by Francesco Sanna and Vanessa Boato, and Dentons took a DLA Piper energy and infrastructure partner in Australia.
What today's moves tell us: firms are paying up for ex-government regulators, litigators and international benches, while DLA Piper keeps donating teams to rivals.
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Operations and Strategy
Firms are using mergers, ex-government hires and overseas build-outs to grow where demand sits, even as integration risk rises.
Stephenson Harwood said chief executive Eric Morris will step down for personal reasons, with a vote on its planned merger with Taylor Wessing expected before year-end. A combination would create one of the larger UK-rooted transatlantic platforms and continue the consolidation wave running through the London market. The market has seen this play before: when demand growth is modest and the cost of running a global firm keeps climbing, cross-border mergers and ex-government hires become the default growth lever rather than the exception.
The hiring pattern tells the same story. Firms are concentrating spend on regulators and litigators, from Sidley's CFIUS addition to Debevoise's ex-DOJ antitrust chief, and on international benches in Hong Kong, Milan and Australia. DLA Piper, by contrast, lost a mass torts team to Skadden and an energy partner to Dentons in the same window, a reminder that lateral-heavy growth cuts both ways.
Practices
Private Equity, Credit and Restructuring
The split in private capital is widening, and dealmakers are reading it closely. Larger sponsors with strong balance sheets are selling and buying, while smaller firms strain under higher rates, slower exits and weaker fundraising, and creditors grow more aggressive. For general counsel and sponsors, that mix points to more work in exits, fund restructurings and liability management at the same time.
Selected Press:
Higher rates are hitting smaller PE firms hardest, with industry fundraising at about $222bn through September, the weakest pace since at least 2020; New State Capital Partners lost roughly a third of staff, including two founding partners, and Aterian is skipping a new flagship fund.
Blackstone booked record European private equity exits of around $6bn this year, more than double its prior high, selling Clarion Events to Informa for £2.2bn and Cirsa to Lottomatica for about €2.8bn as strategic buyers turned more active.
Altice International creditors sued the company, alleging it illegally moved billions of dollars of assets beyond the reach of lenders owed about $9bn.
Blackstone's Jon Gray warned European fiscal strains outweigh US risk and said the firm will keep investing in electricity, digital infrastructure, defense, life sciences and India.
M&A and Capital Markets
Strategic and cross-border activity is holding up even with financing expensive, and dealmakers are positioning around it. This is still a buyer-led market, where strategic acquirers with healthy balance sheets move decisively on assets they have tracked for years, while reopening markets in India sit alongside rate-driven IPO delays elsewhere. Boards are weighing carve-outs and bolt-ons that reshape portfolios rather than waiting for cheaper money.
Selected Press:
London Stock Exchange Group is in talks to buy Octus, a global credit analytics platform, from Permira in a deal that could value it near $3.5bn.
Credit Agricole agreed to buy Lone Star-backed IKB Deutsche Industriebank, a lender with €14.3bn in assets, to expand in Germany, while MUFG is studying a path to control of India's Shriram Finance.
Johnson & Johnson is leaning toward spinning off its orthopedics business after soft medtech results, and Galderma agreed to buy ZO Skin Health from Blackstone for $1.5bn.
Jio Platforms drew more than $20bn of demand for a record India IPO that could fetch a ~$110bn valuation, and Barclays is returning to India equity advisory; AirTrunk delayed a $1.5bn Singapore REIT listing on higher rates.
Antitrust, Governance and Investigations
Enforcement and activism are pulling boards and general counsel into early advisory work. Activist campaigns are compressing strategic timelines, foreign-investment and antitrust review are shaping deal structures, and a widening set of investigations is keeping white-collar teams engaged.
Selected Press:
DGB Investments is pushing to replace Ethan Allen's board and CEO, offering chairman and CEO Farooq Kathwari a chairman emeritus role to smooth a proxy transition, while Ancora Holdings built a stake in UK self-storage group Big Yellow and is pressing for a sale.
The FBI arrested a Saudi national employed by OpenAI for allegedly installing a listening device in the company's offices, a trade-secrets and corporate-espionage matter.
US and European banking regulators are intensifying scrutiny of banks' use of autonomous AI agents, citing cyberattack and financial-stability risks.
Where the Work Sits
***
Rate pressure is the throughline today. In past rate cycles, stress has tended to surface first as a funding and valuation problem rather than a credit-quality one, and the squeeze on smaller sponsors plus the Altice creditor suit fit that pattern, which is why this phase runs through liability-management, creditor-rights and fund-restructuring teams before it reaches broad default work. Smaller sponsors' fundraising and exit strains also feed secondaries, continuation-vehicle and fund-formation mandates.
The deal economy is still generating high-end work at the top. Cross-border M&A like Credit Agricole-IKB, MUFG-Shriram and LSEG-Octus, carve-outs such as J&J's orthopedics review, and the reopening India IPO pipeline point to acquisition finance, merger-control, capital-markets and fund diligence mandates, with strategic buyers setting the pace.
Governance and enforcement round out the demand. Activist campaigns at Ethan Allen and Big Yellow start multi-track board-defense, proxy and strategic-review processes, while the OpenAI espionage arrest, bank AI-agent scrutiny and the premium on CFIUS and ex-DOJ antitrust talent all point to more investigations, national-security and regulatory work.
Global Markets
Macro signals point to higher-for-longer rates and fresh geopolitical risk, and clients are positioning around both.
Dealmakers are watching Wednesday's US inflation print for the Fed's October path, executives are weighing financing and hedging windows before yields move again, and energy and trade desks are pricing Gulf and Black Sea risk. The shift in tone from rate-shock to rate-normalization is what gives boards confidence to revisit shelved deals, but decision-makers are treating the IMF's warnings as a reason to lock terms now rather than wait.
Selected Press:
The IMF warned of a debt-and-yields feedback loop, with global public debt set to top 100% of GDP by 2030 and US interest costs projected to reach 5.7% of GDP by 2031; it said US growth alone cannot fix the deficit and urged France and the UK to act.
New York Fed President John Williams still sees one more rate hike this year but no need to hike in 2027, while the ECB's Pierre Wunsch said Europe will likely have to raise rates again.
Investors braved the Treasury rout to lock in the highest yields in decades as the US-China 10-year spread hit a record 352 basis points and Korea's Kospi fell for a fifth straight day.
Germany is pressing the EU for quotas on Chinese goods as China's trade surplus nears $940bn, and Houthi strikes closed Riyadh's airport while drone attacks hit merchant ships in the Black Sea.
Stories to Watch
US CPI (Wednesday) — the core inflation reading that will shape whether the Fed holds or hikes again in October.
Bank and chip earnings — Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock today, ASML on Wednesday and TSMC on Thursday, key reads on capital-markets demand and AI spending.
Fed Chair Warsh speech, PPI and retail sales (Thursday) — further signals on the rate path.
Albertsons v. Kroger trial (Oct 19, Delaware Chancery) — the $9bn-plus fight over their collapsed merger, a marker for break-fee and merger-litigation risk.
Stephenson Harwood–Taylor Wessing merger vote — expected before year-end, a test of UK law-firm consolidation.
Fed Governor Lisa Cook — a postponed White House hearing on mortgage-fraud allegations keeps Fed-independence questions live.
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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