Good afternoon,
Weil’s London co-managing partner and a fellow M&A partner are in talks to join Sullivan & Cromwell. Weil moved to name two veteran partners to run its 600-lawyer corporate practice after Michael Aiello’s exit. Willkie, Gibson Dunn, Orrick, Crowell & Moring and ArentFox Schiff all added laterals, several tied to data centers and antitrust.
On the client side, Warsh’s Fed raised rates a quarter point to 3.75-4% in a unanimous vote and signaled another hike this year; Trump demanded rates near 1%. The Bank of England held and defied the Fed, and Clearlake Capital took full control of Chelsea FC from Mark Walter and Todd Boehly.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Weil’s London M&A co-head eyes Sullivan & Cromwell; Weil names new corporate leaders as exits near 30
-Willkie, Gibson Dunn, Hogan Lovells Cadwalader and Orrick add data-center, tax and antitrust laterals from Akerman, Goodwin and Kirkland
-Warsh’s Fed hikes to 3.75-4% in a unanimous vote; Trump pushes back; BoE holds, Gulf central banks follow, BoJ due Friday
-Clearlake buys out Walter and Boehly for full control of Chelsea FC at $6.7bn; Guntner draws Blackstone, KKR, Advent and Cinven
-JPMorgan and Goldman chase Europe’s AI-debt boom; Blackstone-Alphabet land a $22bn Crux AI loan; Holtec pulls its $900m IPO
-DOJ seeks a $1.9bn bond from states challenging Paramount-Warner Bros; SEC moves to scrap shareholder-proxy rules
-WhiteHorse Finance weighs a sale as loans sour; The Knot’s loans trade at 70 cents weeks after refinancing
-JPMorgan sees a strong Q3 while Bank of America and Goldman flag weaker fees
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ London co-managing partner is in talks to join Sullivan & Cromwell with a fellow M&A partner.
Willkie Farr & Gallagher hired real estate partners James Grice, Bruce Lowry, Michael McKinley and Thu Pham from Akerman in Dallas, a Texas data-center play.
Gibson Dunn added data center partner Noah Hansford in Dallas.
Orrick hired financial regulatory partner Sumit Indwar from Kirkland & Ellis in London.
Crowell & Moring brought on former DOJ antitrust lawyer Rebecca Valentine as a partner in Washington.
Hogan Lovells Cadwalader recruited tax, pensions and benefits partner Morgan Frisoli from Goodwin in Boston.
ArentFox Schiff added Gabriel Levinson from Haynes Boone as a real estate litigation leader in New York.
What today's moves tell us: the data-center real estate, antitrust and financial-regulatory talent chess game is hyper competitive, and Big Law firms are not afraid of lifting groups straight out of rivals.
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 rebuilding leadership benches around deal talent and the US administration as a way to capture growth and signal strength and stability.
Weil named two veteran public- and private-deals partners to lead its 600-lawyer corporate practice, replacing Michael Aiello, who is taking a team to Cravath. The move follows close to 30 partner departures this year and reported talks by its London co-managing partner to join Sullivan & Cromwell, a reminder that even top franchises lose ground when rivals guarantee books and lift groups.
Boies Schiller has moved closer to Donald Trump’s network through hires and cases, joining firms edging toward the president even as he attacks some competitors.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Private Equity
Sponsors and strategics keep moving on carve-outs, take-privates and data-center infrastructure, and the pace argues for confident rather than cautious dealmaking even with the Fed tightening. Growth-market confidence of this kind is what gives boards and sponsors the appetite to commit capital, and it keeps M&A, financing and antitrust mandates flowing to the firms advising the dealmaking elite.
Selected Press:
Clearlake Capital agreed to buy the combined 25% Chelsea FC stake held by Mark Walter and Todd Boehly at a $6.7bn valuation including debt, with Latham, Sidley, Macfarlanes and Winston & Strawn advising.
Guntner, a German data-center cooling maker, is weighing a ~$1.2bn sale with Advent, Blackstone, Cinven and KKR among bidders.
GFL Environmental is open to an $18bn take-private.
Brookfield agreed to buy Australia’s Reliance Worldwide for $2.9bn at a 32% premium.
KKR emerged as preferred bidder for OTPP-owned packaging maker Logoplaste at a ~$2bn valuation after Apax dropped out.
Starbucks is weighing a $3bn sale of a majority stake in its Japan business.
Canada’s Cohere and Germany’s Aleph Alpha will merge into a ~$20bn AI firm.
Capital Markets and AI Finance
On the AI buildout story, the money is chasing scale into Europe. Each leg of this buildout has run into funding and structuring limits before demand limits, which is why the work lands first with project-finance, private-credit and fund-formation teams. Bankers and sponsors are finding themselves busy repricing term sheets against a Fed that just hiked.
Selected Press:
JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are positioning to finance Europe’s AI and data-center debt; Goldman sees $5-10bn of European data-center bonds by year-end and Bloomberg Intelligence puts Europe’s need near $3tn through 2035.
A group of 10 banks including Goldman Sachs, SMBC and Barclays is providing a $22bn loan for Blackstone and Alphabet’s Crux AI cloud venture.
Nuclear supplier Holtec pulled its $900m IPO, citing a “perfect storm” in the AI sector, and Blackstone is raising $8bn for a renewables and digital-infrastructure private credit fund.
JPMorgan guided Q3 investment-banking and trading revenue up in the mid-to-high teens, while Bank of America sees IB fees down at least 10% and Goldman flagged softer fixed-income trading.
Private Credit and Restructuring
Cracks in private-credit books keep widening even as new capital pours in, and the split is what generates work to bridge views and expectations. Where growth-era loans start to sour, the mandates will soon shift to workout, creditor-rights and special-situations teams. General counsel and fund managers are watching closely as the cost of money climbs.
Selected Press:
WhiteHorse Finance, an H.I.G.-managed private credit fund with about $570m in assets, formed a special committee to weigh a sale after troubled loans pressured its value.
Leveraged loans of The Knot Worldwide, backed by Permira and Spectrum Equity, are trading near 70 cents just weeks after a refinancing.
Carlyle and Apollo economists warned that hyperscaler and AI-project debt is growing riskier, echoing pre-crisis lending; a Houlihan Lokey survey found co-investments and directs are set to become the two largest sources of private-equity capital within five years.
Regulatory, Antitrust and Governance
Merger enforcement and governance rules are both in play, and each fight becomes costly and creates advisory and litigation work. Boards and dealmakers are recalibrating execution risk as the government tests how far states can go and where deal certainty now sits.
Selected Press:
The DOJ asked a judge to make the states and Writers Guild challenging Paramount Skydance’s $110bn purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery post a bond; Paramount seeks about $1.9bn, citing $7m a day in delay costs, while challengers say it waived any bond claim.
The SEC moved to scrap rules governing shareholder proxy proposals, and the EU warned miner MMG of antitrust action over its plan to buy Anglo American’s Brazilian nickel business.
A federal judge ruled Google must make its technology more compatible with rivals, and the Senate blocked the crypto-market Clarity Act.
Where the Work Sits
***
Rates are the organizing force for the near future. With the Fed rates at 3.75-4% and another hike flagged, routine refinancings tip into liability-management and workout files. Notably, the strain is already showing at WhiteHorse Finance and The Knot points to more creditor-rights and special-situations mandates for New York and London teams. If prior tightening cycles are a guide, the same rate move feeds capital-markets, acquisition-finance and restructuring desks at once.
The AI buildout is a financing and infrastructure engine. Europe’s data-center debt push, the $22bn Crux AI loan, and the contest for Guntner send high-end matters to project finance, energy and real estate, while Holtec’s pulled IPO shows how quickly issuance windows can close.
The Paramount-Warner Bros bond fight, the EU’s nickel warning to MMG, and the Google compatibility ruling keep antitrust, merger-control and deal-litigation teams busy well past signing, and the SEC’s proxy-rule rollback adds corporate-governance work.
Sports and cross-border M&A round out the demand around sponsors. Clearlake’s full takeover of Chelsea and the Brookfield, KKR and Starbucks processes point to cross-border diligence, financing and antitrust mandates across the dealmaking elite.
Global Markets
Rates have set the tone, and the first Fed hike in three years reprices everything from term sheets to gilts.
Treasurers, sponsors and boards are locking financing and re-running deal models after Warsh delivered a hawkish hike into elevated inflation and high oil. Fund managers are weighing a follow-up in October and a Bank of Japan move on Friday, while energy-exposed clients wait to see whether the Saudi pipeline restarts. Decision-makers are treating this hike, not last year’s cut, as the anchor for the cost of capital this quarter.
Selected Press:
The Fed raised its target range to 3.75-4% in a unanimous vote, its first hike since 2023, with most officials penciling in one more; the 10-year held near 5% and the 2-year jumped to 4.73%.
Trump said US rates should be “1% or lower,” while the Bank of England held at 3.75% and Gulf central banks in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar raised rates to track the dollar peg.
Brent eased toward $105 on signs the Saudi East-West pipeline could restart within days, and UK 30-year gilts sold at a 5.8% yield, the highest since 1998.
Exxon is nearing a deal to invest in Venezuela alongside state-owned PDVSA, two decades after exiting the country.
Stories to Watch
Bank of Japan decision (Friday, Sept. 18) — a hike would take Japan’s policy rate to a 31-year high and test carry-trade positioning.
Fed’s October meeting — markets price roughly even odds of a follow-up hike; the path sets refinancing windows into year-end.
Paramount-Warner Bros bond ruling — the outcome shapes how far states can slow big media mergers before the March trial.
Big Law first-year hiring — Bloomberg’s look at the small class of 2011 warns AI and a hiring pullback could repeat in 2027.
Electra Therapeutics and Orion180 IPOs (est. Friday, Sept. 18) — fresh reads on issuance appetite after Holtec pulled its listing.
Carnival (today) and Progressive (Friday) earnings — consumer and insurance demand signals as rates climb.
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.
Thanks for reading!
We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
