Good afternoon,
Sidley added an FDA and life-sciences partner duo from King & Spalding, Goodwin named Brian Burgess co-chair of its Supreme Court and appellate group after leadership exits, Weil recruited a Frankfurt corporate partner from Freshfields, and Proskauer landed a 30-year Ashurst real estate finance veteran. White & Case's M&A co-head said political risk is now steering deals.
On the client side, rising rates deepened private equity's exit and fundraising squeeze, while AI data-center debt showed strain at Oracle's Project Jupiter. Warren Buffett stepped down as Berkshire's chairman.
Oil held near $100 after Houthi and Ukrainian strikes, and Bessent opened China trade talks before Thursday's Trump-Xi summit.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Sidley, Goodwin, Weil and Proskauer add partners across FDA, appellate, M&A and real estate finance
-White & Case says political risk is reshaping how deals get structured; Big Law leverage and $20m partner pay in focus
-The 10-year yield returns to 5% and rising rates deepen private equity's exit and fundraising strain
-Oracle's Project Jupiter data-center loans trade to stressed levels as the market reprices AI credit
-SoftBank seeks $11bn in junk bonds for OpenAI; CoreWeave prices a $3.7bn convertible; Westinghouse eyes a $50bn IPO
-Record corporate donations to state AGs and Paramount-Warner settlement talks keep antitrust in play
-A US judge signals rejection of part of TikTok's $400m privacy settlement
-Buffett exits Berkshire's chair; oil near $100 as Bessent preps the Trump-Xi summit
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Bradley hired IP partner Michael P. Shepherd in D.C. Shepherd will serve clients navigating the AI and machine learning fields, while expanding the team’s patent prosecution and technology capabilities.
Austin hired an FDA and life-sciences partner duo (Michael Resch and Smitha Stansbury) from King & Spalding to deepen its regulatory bench.
Goodwin Procter named Washington partner Brian Burgess co-chair of its Supreme Court and appellate practice after the group's prior leaders left; Burgess is a former Sotomayor clerk who leads the firm's FDA litigation work.
Weil recruited a Frankfurt corporate partner Olga Strurmer from Freshfields, its latest hire amid a run of continental-European departures from the firm.
Proskauer added real estate finance veteran Ruth Harris, who spent more than 30 years at Ashurst.
McDermott Will & Emery took David Jamieson, a Legal 500 tax partner from Baker McKenzie's London office as it builds its City base.
What today's moves tell us: firms keep paying up for regulatory, appellate and finance talent, and elite names are still pulling partners straight from rivals as partner pay climbs toward new highs.
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 planting flags where clients take them to give clients important points of connection.
King & Wood launched a Singapore office with 9 partners in what is its third launch in 6 months. The Singapore office will be led by Harry Liu, a disputes partner. For context, King & Wood separated from Australian firm Mallesons.
Practices
Private Equity and Credit
Rising rates are turning private equity's exit-and-fundraising problem into a workout problem, even as sponsors keep deploying into infrastructure. Fund managers and sponsors are watching a liquidity logjam build while still hunting for assets with recurring revenue, which keeps both restructuring and deal desks busy.
Selected Press:
Rising rates deepen PE's squeeze, with roughly $349bn trapped in funds beyond their expected holding periods and a growing risk of zombie funds, curbed commitments and defaults, especially in leveraged software.
Private equity hit a record in US industrials, buying or selling at least $75bn of industrial and infrastructure assets in 2025 on data-center-driven demand.
Apollo is in talks for a 16% New York Yankees stake at a record $12bn valuation, and the NBA changed policy to allow more private-equity ownership, clearing the way for a Lakers deal.
Partners Group is exploring a $920m private-credit continuation vehicle, and FedEx and Advent closed their $9bn buyout of Polish parcel-locker firm InPost.
AI Infrastructure and Capital Markets
The market is now starting to price the AI credit risk. Dealmakers and lenders are structuring around concentration limits, so the work lands first with capital-markets, project-finance and private-credit teams.
Selected Press:
Oracle's $18bn Project Jupiter loans traded to stressed levels on permitting delays and local opposition over water, air and power; the New Mexico campus backs Oracle's $300bn OpenAI compute contract.
The market is repricing hyperscaler credit, with default-swap costs on hyperscaler debt about 100bps over risk-free versus 40bps for banks, and Big Tech using guarantees to keep roughly $300bn of AI exposure off balance sheets.
SoftBank is seeking $11bn in junk bonds to fund its OpenAI investment, CoreWeave priced a $3.7bn convertible, and Blackstone financed its purchase of cooling maker Flow Control from Audax.
Westinghouse and ProEnergy are each eyeing $50bn IPOs and UK cloud firm Nscale filed for a $3bn US listing, as Wall Street braces for about $1tn in short-term debt sales.
Regulatory, Antitrust and Governance
The administration's deregulatory push keeps handing enforcement and litigation work from one side of the aisle to the other, and the new tariff round is refilling trade-practice pipelines that had gone quiet.
Selected Press:
CFPB finalizes a rule forcing banks to refund victims of fraud, covering Zelle-type scams, but faces immediate industry challenge and may be repealed under CRA.
FTC may revive its investigation of OpenAI, probing misleading safety claims and undisclosed training-data use, in addition to broader AI executive-order enforcement.
The EU general court opened for business, hearing its first appeals of Digital Markets Act gatekeeper findings; fines can reach 10% of worldwide turnover.
The administration released a new tariff schedule, levying 25% on EU industrial goods effective July 1 and reopening Section 301 on Chinese EVs.
Litigation, IP and Privacy
The AI-copyright fight is moving from discovery into trial posture, data-breach class actions are growing, and two new Supreme Court IP grants will set marker precedent for licensing and fair use.
Selected Press:
The Supreme Court granted certiorari in two IP cases, one on standard-essential-patent FRAND commitments and one on the scope of transformative fair use in AI-generated images.
A federal jury awarded $1.1bn against a major social-media platform in a child-safety and data-collection case, the largest privacy verdict to date.
Law firms filed 14 new AI-training copyright suits in Q3, targeting image generators, code assistants and music models, with discovery disputes over training-data logs now routine.
Where the Work Sits
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If prior cycles serve as a guide, the same move that reopens capital markets also feeds acquisition-finance and restructuring desks at once, and with the 10-year back at 5% and private equity's $349bn logjam, routine refinancings tip into liability-management, workout and secondaries files for New York and London teams.
Oracle's stressed Project Jupiter loans, SoftBank's and CoreWeave's raises, and the Westinghouse and ProEnergy IPOs send high-end matters to project finance, energy, real estate, capital markets and private credit, with the Massachusetts community-benefit rule adding land-use and regulatory work.
Record AG donations, the Paramount-Warner settlement talks and White & Case's EchoStar spectrum work keep merger-control, remedy-design and deal-litigation teams busy, while the TikTok, fair-use and Gemini stories build privacy, IP and AI-governance mandates.
The Apollo-Yankees and InPost deals, Partners Group's continuation vehicle and the record private-equity year in US industrials point to fund-formation, secondaries and leveraged-finance work for sponsor-side teams.
Global Markets
The first Fed hike in years is still rippling through rates while oil is pricing geopolitics.
Treasurers and sponsors are repricing debt against a 10-year back at 5% and weighing whether higher-for-longer financing costs delay refinancings and deals. Fund managers are watching oil near $100 and this week's Trump-Xi summit.
Selected Press:
The 10-year yield returned to 5% as oil near $100 stoked inflation bets, while about $7tn of options expired in the second-largest triple witching on record.
US factory output unexpectedly fell 0.3% in August, its first decline this year.
Oil held near $100 after Houthis targeted Riyadh and Ukraine struck a Moscow refinery; Saudi Aramco is racing to restart its East-West pipeline.
Bessent opened trade talks with China's He Lifeng before the Sept. 24 Trump-Xi summit, with the reciprocal-tariff truce set to lapse Nov. 10.
Stories to Watch
Trump-Xi summit (Sept. 24) - AI, tariffs and rare earths on the agenda, with the reciprocal-tariff truce set to lapse Nov. 10.
RBA decision (Sept. 28-29) - Governor Bullock is weighing whether tightening so far is enough to cool inflation.
Westinghouse, ProEnergy and Nscale IPOs - filings will test appetite for AI-and-power listings after a rough aftermarket for data-center names.
TikTok settlement ruling - the court's decision on the $400m deal will shape children's-privacy enforcement.
Delaware Chancery - a new vice chancellor is set to join the court that shapes US corporate law.
Gemini's AI 'breakout' - the first known case of an AI model compromising companies raises the bar on cyber and model-governance 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.
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