Good afternoon,
Simpson Thacher pulled a team of insurance M&A partners out of Mayer Brown and Clifford Chance, while Latham & Watkins recruited Davis Polk's Byron Rooney who acted as lead on the SpaceX IPO, and fintech partner Dan Gibbons to its capital markets bench.
On the client side, Apollo is on track for a record year of acquisitions, entering the race for easyJet with a £5.7bn bid and buying a €3bn stake in Bayer's contraceptives business. Qiagen drew takeover interest from EQT, Advent, and KKR. SEC’s activist investor guidance now includes the disclosure of clients in filings. The renewed US-Iran strikes pushed oil up about 4% to $74.70 per barrel, a pricing level that shows the market expecting the hostilities to be temporary.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Simpson Thacher lifts insurance M&A team from Mayer Brown and Clifford Chance / Latham grabs Davis Polk's SpaceX IPO lead
-Law firms expand "blackbox" bonuses as pay-transparency tensions grow
-Eversheds Sutherland posts double-digit profit and PEP gains; firms race to build sports practices
-Apollo chases record acquisition year with easyJet and Bayer deals
-Qiagen draws EQT, Advent, and KKR interest / Xavier Niel takes ~$6bn Vodafone stake
-Kimmeridge pushes Devon Energy to sell faster after $25bn Coterra deal
-US and Iran trade fresh strikes, Hormuz status disputed, oil +4%
-Warsh testimony and inflation data set the tone for the July Fed decision
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Simpson Thacher hired a team of insurance M&A partners from Mayer Brown and Clifford Chance in New York. Two Clifford Chance partners who co-led its US insurance practice join as co-heads of Simpson's new insurance and regulatory team, alongside Mayer Brown's Benjamin Kralstein. The Clifford Chance pair recently advised Legal & General on its Meiji Yasuda insurance deal.
Latham & Watkins recruited Davis Polk capital markets partners Byron Rooney and Dan Gibbons in New York. Rooney, a two-decade Davis Polk veteran who led the SpaceX IPO, becomes global vice chair of Latham's capital markets practice. Gibbons brings a fintech and digital assets practice, having advised on IPOs for Circle, Klarna, Gemini, and Robinhood.
What today's moves tell us: Insurance M&A and capital markets remain the most contested benches, and firms are lifting whole teams to stand up new practice groups rather than moving incrementally by adding one partner at a time.
Operations and Strategy
Firms are broadening their sports industry coverage while internally testing how far they can push pay secrecy and new practice lines to compete for talent and mandates.
Firms are also racing to build sports practices as team and league ownership becomes an asset class for sponsors and funds. Paul Hastings launched a sports practice with a former American football general counsel, entering a field long dominated by Proskauer and Covington.
As noted by The American Lawyer, more large firms are moving to "blackbox" bonus structures that hide top-partner pay even from other partners. The shift keeps rainmaker compensation competitive as consolidation at the top of the market intensifies, but it is straining partner expectations for transparency into how pay is set.
Eversheds Sutherland (International) posted double-digit gains in profit and profit per equity partner, with revenue up 8%, per Legal Business. The results point to demand holding across the firm's international platform.
Practices
Private Equity and M&A
Sponsors are leaning back into large deals even as many peers struggle to deploy capital while PE and M&A attorneys take notice of Apollo’s acquisition pace seeing this as a barometer of industry confidence. The cluster of cross-border bids and stake purchases points to sustained divestitures, financing, and regulatory work, with sponsors positioning to move while credit is available and targets are in play.
Selected Press:
Apollo is on track for a record acquisition year, entering the easyJet race with a £5.7bn bid that gatecrashed Castlelake and agreeing to buy a €3bn stake in Bayer's contraceptives business while many PE peers struggle to deploy.
Qiagen, the European molecular testing company, drew early takeover interest from EQT and Advent, with KKR also among the PE suitors.
Xavier Niel agreed to buy a Vodafone stake from Emirates Telecommunications for about $6bn, becoming the British carrier's biggest shareholder.
Corporate Governance and Activism
Activist pressure is compressing timelines for asset sales, and boards that have just closed large deals are already being pushed to divest faster. At the same time, the SEC’s new guidance on Schedule 13D and proxy rules now requires U.S. activists to disclose the identities of clients funding campaigns, including investors in single‑issuer “sidecar” vehicles and limited‑partnership participants investing more than $500. This added transparency gives boards and their advisers a clearer view of who is actually sitting behind an activist stake and a proxy fight, even as the operational pace of campaigns continues to accelerate.
For clients targeted by activists, this is intensifying a truly multi‑track process: outside counsel are moving quickly not only on divestiture workstreams, board and bylaw defense, and engagement with potential buyers, but also on dissecting activist filings to understand the coalition of backers and their broader intentions. The same regulatory shift that may unsettle hedge funds that have prized investor secrecy is likely to become another lever in boardroom strategy—shaping how companies negotiate with activists, frame their defensive narratives to other shareholders, and time asset sale processes under compressed activist-driven deadlines.
Selected Press:
Kimmeridge Energy Management, an outspoken shale investor, criticized Devon Energy's divestment program as too slow following Devon's $25bn takeover of Coterra Energy.
US activist investors must disclose clients in filings.
Insurance and Capital Markets
Fintech listings are drawing solid investment, a read that capital markets partners and GCs are tracking as they weigh where regulatory-heavy deal work is concentrating as the fintech IPO pipeline is reopening and widening the capital markets calendar.
Selected Press:
Fintech capital markets activity continues to build, with recent IPOs from Circle, Klarna, Gemini, and Robinhood marking the pipeline firms are chasing.
Where the Work Sits
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The clearest demand story is sponsor M&A. Apollo's easyJet and Bayer moves, Qiagen's suitors, and Niel's Vodafone stake each generate cross-border acquisition, financing, and regulatory mandates across multiple firms and jurisdictions. Sponsors deploying against a cautious field keeps sell-side and financing teams busy.
Fintech listings anchor a second pool of high-end matters as these IPOs demand dedicated capital markets benches as this is the kind of complex, regulated work that concentrates at a small set of firms.
Activism is a mandate multiplier. Kimmeridge's push on Devon after the Coterra deal points to divestiture, governance-defense, and buy-side work as portfolios get reshaped; the moment an activist files is usually the start of a multi-track process, not the end.
Global Markets
Energy risk is rising even as the broader system looks more resilient than in past crises.
Clients are watching the Strait of Hormuz and oil as the main threat to deal timing and financing costs, while a calmer read on global growth gives boards room to keep deals moving. Dealmakers are weighing whether resilient equities and a steadier dollar keep financing open through the summer, and treasurers are modeling energy-driven inflation into the July Fed decision.
Selected Press:
US and Iran exchanged fresh strikes, disputing whether the Strait of Hormuz is open after Iran declared it closed over the weekend; oil jumped about 4%.
The dollar's reduced global role is limiting stress transmission, per Bloomberg's Economics Daily, which cites the "bouncebackability" of equity prices and roughly 3% global growth this year, near the 3.5% prior-two-year average.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh testifies before Congress this week, with inflation data set to shape the July rate decision.
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 newsletters that highlight the drivers of demand for legal services.
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