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Vinson & Elkins raids Latham’s structured-finance practice for its vice chair while Debevoise & Plimpton hires away the co-head of Freshfields’ investment-funds group, two moves that land on the same morning and underscore how aggressively firms are targeting each other’s franchise practices. Paul Weiss, Quinn Emanuel and Latham each add lateral partners of their own, keeping the lateral market momentum.
On the client side, Paramount Global reaches settlements with a dozen state attorneys general to clear the path for its roughly $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, while SoftBank slows its plan to take its $50 billion Ampere chip unit public, a reminder that even the biggest sponsor-led IPOs remain hostage to macro nerves. Courts and regulators add to the docket: Meta faces a February bench trial over teen-safety claims, Google is fined €463 million by Ireland’s data-protection authority, and Tesla heads to trial on racial-bias allegations.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-V&E lands Latham’s structured-finance vice chair; Debevoise takes Freshfields’ funds co-head; Paul Weiss, Quinn and Latham add partners
-Weil weighs a merger after a rainmaker exodus; California bars PE and hedge funds from directing law firms
-Paramount settles with 12 state AGs to clear its $110bn Warner Bros. deal
-Meta taps Beth Wilkinson before a February school-harm trial; Google fined $463m in Ireland; Tesla faces a bias trial
-Data-center spending tops housing as SoftBank slows its $50bn IPO and Oracle-linked loans trade at 90 cents
-IPO pipeline builds: Westinghouse, Nscale, Oura, Firmus; SoftBank raises $11bn of junk bonds for OpenAI
-G7 yields hit 2008 highs and the US 10-year a 2007 high as CRE stress shifts to CMBS losses
-Jana pushes Cooper Cos.; Ares eyes CIP; JPMorgan and Qatar’s QIA launch a $20bn partnership
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Vinson & Elkins hired structured-finance and securitization partners Loren Finegold, formerly Latham’s global vice chair of structured finance, and Ed Comber from Latham & Watkins in New York, with Finegold to lead the firmwide group.
Debevoise & Plimpton hired secondaries and funds partner Mary Lavelle, Freshfields’ global funds co-head, as a partner in London.
Paul Weiss added executive compensation partner Deidre Kalenderian in New York.
Quinn Emanuel hired litigator Sean Suber from Winston Taylor in Chicago.
Latham & Watkins took insurance-recovery and complex commercial litigation partner Greg Van Houten from Haynes Boone in Washington.
Morgan Lewis hired labor and employment partner Sara Kalis from Amazon in Chicago, and Greenberg Traurig added finance partner Shan Khan from Kirkland & Ellis in Dallas.
What today’s moves tell us: firms are paying up for structured-finance, funds and litigation talent, lifting partners straight from Latham, Freshfields and Kirkland even as Weil’s losses force it to consider a merger.
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Operations and Strategy
Weil’s talent bleed and a new California law are reshaping how firms think about structure and outside capital.
Weil Gotshal & Manges, hit by an exodus of top talent, is weighing options for its future including a potential merger with a competitor. Legal Business reports nearly a quarter of Weil’s London partnership has left since January, with another funds partner heading to Simpson Thacher; the firm has recruited a Frankfurt corporate partner from Freshfields to offset recent corporate losses.
The Wall Street Journal reports that elite firms built on cradle-to-grave partnership face an awkward problem: their senior partners aren’t retiring, squeezing succession planning and equity for younger partners.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law barring private equity, hedge funds and litigation funders from directing or influencing the firms they back, targeting the manager-services structures that let outside capital fund non-legal operations. It puts California alongside other states limiting outside ownership and adds professional-responsibility and entity-structuring work for firms exploring those models.
Practices
M&A and Antitrust
Paramount’s settlement clearing its Warner Bros. deal, contested take-private fights and a fresh activist campaign are giving boards and sponsors room to move, and general counsel are watching how far regulators and shareholders will push. Dealmakers read the mix as reason to keep M&A, financing and antitrust mandates flowing to the firms advising the dealmaking elite.
Selected Press:
Paramount settled lawsuits brought by 12 state attorneys general, clearing the way for its $110bn acquisition of Warner Bros.; terms include a $1.5bn California production commitment and a penalty for missing a 30-film pledge.
Silver Lake is fighting Carl Icahn and much of the merger-arbitrage community over the Endeavor buyout, a dispute testing deal terms and appraisal rights.
Jana Partners is pushing Cooper Cos. to replace its CEO and board chair, calling the specialty healthcare company “a crisis of its own creation.”
Ares is exploring a minority stake in Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Amsted is weighing a $6bn sale of data-center cooling maker Baltimore Aircoil, and JPMorgan and Qatar’s QIA launched a $20bn markets partnership.
Warburg Pincus’s sweetened $1.5bn bid for Australia’s Ingenia and EQT’s $2.6bn offer for Perpetual were both rejected, while Botswana pressed for a bigger De Beers stake as Anglo American divests.
Capital Markets and AI Finance
The IPO window is open and AI financing keeps running even with yields at multi-year highs, but the strain is showing where the money has been cheapest. All legs of the AI buildout have hit funding and structuring limits before demand limits, so the first mandates land with capital-markets, project-finance and private-credit teams rather than the operating businesses. Sponsors are moving fast to lock in funding while the window holds.
Selected Press:
US spending on data centers and IT now tops residential investment, with S&P projecting hyperscaler capex above $1.3tn in 2027 and warning that capex is outrunning revenue.
SoftBank slowed the IPO of its roughly $50bn data-center business while raising over $11bn in junk bonds and more than $10bn in other bonds to fund its next OpenAI tranche.
$18bn of loans tied to an Oracle-leased data center are being quoted at 90 cents by syndicate banks including Santander and Jefferies, an early mark of stress in AI-linked debt.
Westinghouse is targeting a $50bn-plus US IPO, Nvidia-backed Nscale filed to list, Australia’s Firmus is seeking $5bn, and Oura is seeking $2.2bn at up to a $15bn valuation.
Nvidia agreed to buy another $1.5bn of SoftBank-backed SB Energy at a discount to its IPO, and Qatar raised $3bn in its first bond sale of the year.
Litigation and Regulatory
Consumer-tech and employment cases are converting into balance-sheet risk, and enforcement is landing on privacy and market structure. General counsel and boards are staffing up for trials and regulatory defense as exposure moves from headlines to damages.
Selected Press:
Meta hired litigator Beth Wilkinson ahead of the first bellwether trial, set for February, in the school-district MDL alleging its platforms harmed students’ mental health; Wilkinson also joined Paramount’s defense and is helping Disney sue the FCC.
Ireland’s privacy regulator fined Google $463m for GDPR violations tied to location-data processing from 2018 to 2020.
Tesla faces a California trial over alleged racial discrimination against Black workers at its Fremont plant, with millions in potential damages.
The Fed is stepping up scrutiny of bank exposure to quant firms after the Jane Street hit, and an SEC regulatory rollback puts $400m in US audit fees at risk.
A Kremlin-backed forgery scheme moved $7bn through global banks, the FT reported, raising fresh anti-money-laundering and sanctions exposure.
Where the Work Sits
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The SoftBank’s slowed IPO, the Oracle-linked loans trading at 90 cents, and the Westinghouse, Nscale and Firmus listings send high-end matters to project finance, capital markets, energy and restructuring teams at once and send signals to the market about the open window.
With G7 yields at 2008 levels and CRE losses moving onto CMBS investors, routine refinancings tip into liability-management and creditor-rights work, and the early stress in AI-linked debt points to more special-situations mandates for New York and London desks.
Paramount’s state-AG settlement, the contested Endeavor and Ingenia fights, and Jana’s Cooper campaign keep merger-control, remedy-design, activism-defense and deal-litigation teams busy well past signing.
The rest of the demand sits in disputes and firm structure. Meta’s school-harm trial, Google’s GDPR fine and Tesla’s bias case drive product-liability, privacy and employment work, while California’s outside-capital ban and Weil’s merger review add professional-responsibility and entity-structuring mandates.
Global Markets
Yields are back at pre-crisis highs even as an AI rally lifts stocks, leaving treasurers and boards to reprice financing risk against a jumpy market.
Executives are weighing a bond market where the average G7 10-year yield hit its highest since 2008 and the US 10-year its highest since 2007, while commercial-real-estate strain shifts losses onto CMBS investors. Based on prior tightening cycles it is safe to extrapolate that refinancings at these levels tip into liability-management and workout files, so dealmakers are positioning to pull issuance forward while the IPO window holds.
Selected Press:
The average G7 10-year yield hit 4.285%, the highest since 2008, and the US 10-year reached its highest since 2007, even as the Nasdaq closed at a record on AI optimism.
US commercial real estate faces a crisis shifting losses onto CMBS investors, per Bloomberg’s Big Take.
China and US officials wrapped a second day of talks in New York before Xi Jinping’s visit, discussing AI investment and a national-security notification system.
The UK borrowed more than forecast in the first five months of the fiscal year, a setback before the Healey budget, and oil steadied near $100 as US-Iran diplomacy resumed.
Stories to Watch
Trump-Xi summit (Sept. 24) — trade, AI and tariffs top the agenda as officials wrap preparatory talks in New York.
UN General Assembly (this week) — Iran, Ukraine and Gaza in focus; Trump addresses the assembly Tuesday, with US-Iran diplomacy in play.
Chicago Fed National Activity Index (today) and Durable Goods Orders (Friday) — fresh reads on the economy against high yields.
Costco and Darden earnings (Thursday) — consumer-demand signals as rates stay elevated.
Westinghouse and Nscale IPO filings — tests of appetite for AI- and energy-linked listings after a record Nasdaq close.
California’s outside-capital law — watch for compliance responses and challenges from firms exploring manager-services structures.
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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