Good afternoon,
Weil Gotshal & Manges, a top-30 US firm by revenue a year ago, is moving to dissolve after its management committee recommended an orderly wind-down, with a partnership vote due within days. The lateral market kept moving around it, as Simpson Thacher, Vinson & Elkins, Mayer Brown and Ashurst Perkins Coie added partners and Sidley Austin recruited a restructuring banker to run its liability management practice.
On the client side, the AI build-out kept straining credit markets, with global bond sales setting records and the Fed holding rates as Chair Kevin Warsh warned that borrowing costs “get in the cracks.” Dealmaking stayed busy, with Marvell, GE Vernova and Trian all pursuing multibillion-dollar transactions.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Weil Gotshal moves to an orderly wind-down; a partner vote is due within days, with staff promised 90 days of pay
-Laterals roll on: Simpson Thacher builds out Chicago, while Vinson & Elkins, Mayer Brown and Ashurst Perkins Coie add partners
-Sidley Austin hires a PJT restructuring banker to lead liability management as the fight for restructuring talent intensifies
-AI keeps automating the junior-lawyer apprenticeship model, raising training and leverage questions for firms
-AI borrowing drives record global bond sales; Morgan Stanley delays part of a $15B Anthropic-linked data-center loan
-Deal flow builds: Marvell–Lumentum, GE Vernova–Trench and Trian’s bid for Wendy’s; Deutsche Telekom drops a $200B T-Mobile tie-up
-Fed holds at 3.75–4.00% as Warsh flags AI financing’s rate sensitivity; Lagarde to leave the ECB early
-What to Watch: ECB and BOJ decisions, the UK Budget, Big Tech earnings, and the Weil partner vote
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett added four partners to its new Chicago office: M&A partners Shiva Sandill and Trevor Currie from White & Case, capital structure solutions partner David Gremling, and executive compensation partner Lauren Cates, the latter two from Kirkland & Ellis.
Vinson & Elkins hired corporate M&A partner Lisa Morales in New York.
Ashurst Perkins Coie added complex litigation partner Austin Evers in Washington, D.C., from Freshfields.
Mayer Brown hired capital markets and commodities derivatives partner Edwin Nazario in Washington, D.C.
Simpson Thacher’s Chicago office, opened in August, now counts nearly a dozen partners as it builds toward roughly 100,000 square feet of space.
What today’s moves tell us: the lateral market is pricing talent aggressively across M&A, funds, capital markets and litigation even as one marquee firm prepares to close its doors.
Operations and Strategy
The collapse of Weil’s 95-year-old partnership is reshaping the top of the market in real time, while firms keep spending on restructuring talent and confront what AI is doing to lawyer training.
Weil Gotshal & Manges, which ranked among the 30 largest US firms by revenue a year ago, saw its management committee recommend an orderly wind-down, with a partnership vote set to begin within days. The plan follows a run of partner exits and failed merger talks with Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Associates and staff were told they will keep salary and benefits for 90 days and remain eligible for year-end bonuses if they stay.
Yale Law professor John Morley, who studies firm collapses, said firms move to wind down quickly to limit partner liability once the end looks inevitable. The legal market has seen versions of this: once a failed succession and stalled merger talks converge, the orderly wind-down itself becomes the goal.
Firms are still paying up elsewhere. Sidley Austin hired PJT Partners restructuring banker William Evarts to lead its liability management practice, an unusual hire of a banker who has never practiced law, as pay for top restructuring lawyers can top $20 million.
Gibson Dunn litigation co-chair Trey Cox warned that automating document review, cite-checking and first drafts is stripping out the billable work that has long trained and paid for junior associates, a direct challenge to the apprenticeship model and the leverage math behind it.
Practices
AI Finance and Private Credit
The debt behind the AI build-out is where demand is shifting. Restructuring is no longer only about distress; it is increasingly about proactive liability management and balance-sheet engineering ahead of the next turn in the cycle. Lenders, sponsors and general counsel are watching refinancing walls and widening spreads, and the flow of financing news points to steady work in liability management, workouts and intercreditor negotiation rather than a pause.
Selected Press:
Global bond sales set a record, fueled by an AI borrowing binge, as issuers rushed to fund data centers, power and chips.
Banks led by Morgan Stanley delayed plans to offload $5 billion to $7 billion of a $15 billion loan backing an Anthropic-linked data center in Texas after the state paused new projects.
A monthlong selloff in AI cloud names, including CoreWeave, pushed credit spreads wider, a reminder that the buildout’s financing is rate-sensitive.
M&A and Capital Markets
Dealmakers are leaning into large strategic transactions even with financing costs elevated, a sign boards are prioritizing strategic necessity over waiting for cheaper money. General counsel and dealmakers are weighing antitrust and financing risk as several multibillion-dollar deals move at once, which points to a busier calendar of sell-side, financing and merger-review mandates.
Selected Press:
Marvell Technology is in advanced talks to buy optical-components maker Lumentum, a listed company valued around $90 billion, in one of the largest technology deals on record.
GE Vernova agreed to buy grid-components maker Trench Group from Triton Partners for $9 billion, with Skadden advising GE Vernova and Latham & Watkins advising Triton.
Trian Fund Management offered to take Wendy’s private for about $1.4 billion, a 20% premium, reviving activist-led buyout activity.
Deutsche Telekom dropped a potential $200 billion merger with T-Mobile US, removing one of the largest possible combinations from the board.
Tax and Cross-Border Investment
A UK move to tax sovereign wealth funds’ property holdings is the kind of change that reshapes how large overseas investors structure real estate. Fund sponsors and their counsel are already reassessing holding structures and REIT routes ahead of the 2029 start date.
Selected Press:
The UK plans to tax sovereign wealth funds’ directly held UK property from the start of 2029, ending a long-standing exemption and targeting about £690 million a year, while offering access to UK REITs at a reduced 15% corporation tax rate.
Gulf-state and other sovereign investors are the most exposed; the property industry warns the change could cool foreign investment, and the Office for Budget Responsibility calls the revenue estimate highly uncertain.
Where the Work Sits
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With bond markets setting records while individual AI names sell off, the work is moving toward liability management, workouts, intercreditor negotiation, project and structured finance, and the disclosure advice that sits around private credit.
M&A and antitrust work is building alongside it. Large strategic deals such as Marvell–Lumentum and GE Vernova–Trench, together with the collapse of the Deutsche Telekom–T-Mobile talks, point to merger-review, financing and execution mandates, while activist-led buyouts like Trian’s bid for Wendy’s add governance and defense work.
Cross-border tax and real estate is a quieter but real source of mandates. The UK’s plan to tax sovereign wealth funds’ property holdings points to structuring, REIT and fund-formation work for Gulf and other overseas investors reassessing how they hold UK assets.
Restructuring runs through all of it. Rate-sensitive AI credit, refinancing walls and the scramble for liability-management talent point to sustained creditor-rights, workout and special-situations demand for firms that can move between credit, funds and bankruptcy.
Global Markets
Central banks are diverging as an AI-driven financing boom meets higher-for-longer rates.
Executives and treasurers are weighing whether the Fed’s hold is a pause or a prelude to more hikes, and dealmakers are timing issuance accordingly. Central banks may be nearing the end of one rate story even as the dispersion of outcomes, by sector, region and balance-sheet quality, keeps widening, which is when careful financing advice matters most. Clients are reading Warsh’s AI comments as a signal that financing conditions, not just demand, will set the pace of the buildout.
Selected Press:
The Fed held at 3.75–4.00%, and Chair Kevin Warsh said interest rates “get in the cracks,” pointing to widening spreads and AI-name volatility; the Fed will also cut to six scheduled meetings a year by 2028.
Global bond sales set a record on AI borrowing, even as US-friendly nations cut Treasury purchases by 60% in 2026, led by Asia.
Christine Lagarde will step down as ECB president in February, with the ECB expected to hold; the Bank of Japan is set to hold Friday near its inflation milestone.
UK Chancellor John Healey delivered a modest first budget that leaves little room for error as energy prices rise and rate-hike pressure builds.
What We’re Watching
Weil partnership vote (within days) — formalizes the wind-down and sets the clock on client transitions, conflicts and the race for its partners and associates.
ECB decision (today) — a hold is expected, and Christine Lagarde’s early exit adds leadership uncertainty for European rates.
Bank of Japan decision (Friday) — a hold is expected near its inflation milestone, a signal for the yen and global carry trades.
US Q3 GDP, core PCE and personal income and spending (today) — the first hard growth and inflation reads after the Fed’s hold.
Big Tech earnings — Amazon and Eli Lilly report after Alphabet’s miss and Microsoft’s beat, a key read on AI capital spending.
UK Budget fallout — gilt markets weigh Chancellor Healey’s first budget as energy prices and rate-hike pressure build.
That’s the rundown. See you next time 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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