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Weil Gotshal & Manges' wind-down has turned into a cross-border talent grab. London rainmakers Marco Compagnoni and Jonathan Wood are in talks to join Sidley Austin, which is also circling Weil private equity partners in France and Germany, even as Gibson Dunn's intake from the funds practice reaches about 120 lawyers. Firms kept poaching elsewhere, from Paul Hastings in Brussels to Jones Day in Frankfurt.
On the client side, a Democratic sweep of Congress sent stocks to their best day since August, knocked the ten-year to 4.89% and oil down roughly 8%, and put private equity and President Trump's orbit on notice for a wave of congressional investigations. AstraZeneca, SoftBank and Kraft Heinz headline a busy deal tape.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Weil's London stars weigh Sidley — Compagnoni and Wood in talks, with a Europe-wide PE raid behind them
-Laterals roll on — Paul Hastings (Brussels), Jones Day (Frankfurt), Dentons, Barnes & Thornburg, Ogletree, BCLP add partners
-Blue wave puts private equity, crypto and Trump-deal firms on notice for congressional investigations
-Texas's business-friendly bench flips as Democrats sweep the state high court and 21 appellate seats
-Deal tape stays full — AstraZeneca bids $10B for Rhythm, China blocks SoftBank-ABB, Kraft Heinz sheds coffee
-AI's financing bill climbs — Meta's euro bond draws record orders, Goldman and Apollo shop SpaceX's $40B chip loan
-Markets cheer the deadlock — S&P's best day since August, 10-year 4.89%, oil off ~8%, BoE hikes to 4%
-Watch: Friday payrolls, the 5th Circuit anti-ESG hearing, lame-duck judge confirmations, Anthropic's Nov 16 IPO
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Sidley Austin is in talks to hire Weil's London leaders (global private equity head Marco Compagnoni and London managing partner Jonathan Wood) and is separately discussing moves with Weil PE partners in France and Germany, pointing to a Europe-wide raid.
Sidley also hired investment funds partner Arman Zadeh from Kirkland & Ellis in Los Angeles, its third Kirkland funds partner in a month as it builds a private equity funds practice.
Paul Hastings took a four-lawyer team from DLA Piper across Brussels and London, led by energy, finance and EU regulatory partner Orestis Omran, who will co-chair the Brussels office.
Jones Day hired Willkie Farr & Gallagher's finance chief Jasmin Dettmar as a partner in Frankfurt, its fifth partner hire in Germany this year.
Dentons took a three-partner insurance litigation team — Sandra Jones, Jessica Gallagher and Timothy O'Driscoll — from Faegre Drinker into Short Hills, New Jersey.
Barnes & Thornburg added a Ballard Spahr real estate finance trio (Andrew Almand and Darnell Morrow in Washington, Jeremy Nauman in Minneapolis).
Ogletree Deakins picked up Jackson Lewis's Lara Prodanovich in San Diego and Toby Piering in Seattle.
BCLP added IP and tech partner Zayd Alathari in Riyadh.
What today's moves tell us: Weil's collapse is still the market's biggest talent engine, but the raids have gone global, with rivals lifting whole practices — funds, real estate finance, EU regulatory — rather than picking off names.
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Operations and Strategy
Weil's unwind keeps generating both legal work and cautionary tales, while rivals push into new markets and practices.
Weil has launched an initiative it codenamed "Project Dunkirk" to place its London support staff as the firm prepares to dissolve. Its M&A rainmaker Michael Aiello spent the days before the wind-down on the stand in the failed $24.6 billion Kroger-Albertsons merger trial, where executives testified they could never agree on how many stores to divest. Stroock's 2023 wind-down and Dewey & LeBoeuf's 2012 collapse both showed how fast a flagship franchise empties once the exits begin, and Weil's roughly 1,200 lawyers are now scattering across the market.
Rivals are planting flags in growth markets. Latham & Watkins more than doubled its Houston project development team with five partner hires to chase first-of-their-kind energy and infrastructure projects that partner Jason Bennett calls significant items on clients' balance sheets, and Dentons absorbed Cayman firm HSM Chambers to deepen its offshore-finance coverage. Dentons chief executive Kate Barton told Bloomberg she expects the cost of capital to keep rising even with a divided Washington.
Practices
M&A and International Trade
Dealmakers read the midterms as a green light, not a brake. Sidley's Kai Liekefett notes antitrust review still sits with a Republican White House, DOJ and FTC that lean toward clearing deals, and Freshfields' Charles Hayes says private capital wants clarity, not a particular party. Executives and boards are pushing portfolio resets and cross-border deals while financing stays open, which keeps sell-side, merger-review and acquisition-finance desks busy.
Selected Press:
AstraZeneca offered about $10 billion for obesity drugmaker Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, and Boehringer Ingelheim struck a $7 billion cancer-drug licensing deal with China's Sino Biopharmaceutical.
Kraft Heinz agreed to sell its North American coffee brands, including Maxwell House, to One Rock Capital Partners at a $650 million enterprise value, while Oaktree-backed Spectrum Brands went public with an unsolicited $1.6 billion bid for Helen of Troy.
Mitsui Chemicals will buy chipmaking-materials maker JSR from Japan's JIC for $8.2 billion, and merger talks between Smith+Nephew and Johnson & Johnson's orthopedics unit collapsed.
Bank of America and JPMorgan are lining up $2.4 billion of debt to back CVC's $4.3 billion purchase of International Flavors & Fragrances' food-ingredients business.
Private Equity, Credit, and Restructuring
Sponsors face a louder political spotlight and a jumpier credit tape at once. Private equity firms are being told to brace for congressional investigations into their reach in healthcare and housing, and hedge funds are flagging rising private-credit risk as rates stay high. Recent credit scares have tended to begin as funding and refinancing problems rather than credit-quality problems, which keeps fund-formation, liability-management and creditor-rights teams in demand.
Selected Press:
Private-equity firms are preparing for congressional hearings into healthcare and housing roll-ups now that Democrats control both chambers.
Hedge funds are warning that rising rates are exposing cracks in private credit, and Apollo-backed broadband provider Brightspeed may file for bankruptcy by December.
Goldman Sachs and Apollo are in talks to syndicate parts of a $40 billion chip-financing package for SpaceX, a test of appetite for AI-infrastructure debt.
Sequoia raised $10 billion in new funds while unwinding two decades of expansion and closing its London office; Churchill, a Nuveen affiliate, raised $1.55 billion for junior-capital lending to sponsor-backed companies.
Antitrust, Regulatory, and Litigation
Enforcement and disclosure risk are shifting rather than easing. Merger review stays in Republican hands in Washington, but cross-border deals are drawing scrutiny abroad, a Democratic Congress is readying investigations, and Texas's business-friendly bench just flipped, each a distinct mandate for general counsel and their outside firms.
Selected Press:
China blocked SoftBank's $5.4 billion purchase of ABB's robotics division, and UK regulators opened a public-interest probe of the $1.6 billion Sky-ITV deal.
Four Texas Supreme Court justices, including Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock, lost reelection as Democrats swept 21 appellate races, handing Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa power to reshape a judiciary built for business-dispute predictability.
Moderna will ask the Federal Circuit to shield its COVID-19 vaccine sales from Arbutus and Genevant patent claims, with $1.3 billion riding on the outcome, while the 5th Circuit hears a challenge to Texas's "anti-ESG" investment law.
Axon was hit with a proposed class action over its AI license-plate-reader network, Lockheed agreed to pay $30 million to settle Trump-administration DEI claims, and activist DGB won board control of Ethan Allen.
Where the Work Sits
***
Meta's record-oversubscribed euro bond, Goldman and Apollo shopping SpaceX's $40 billion chip loan, and hedge funds' warnings on private credit all point to liability-management, creditor-rights and project-finance mandates. The post-sweep selloff in data-center and chip names, plus new governors in Texas and Georgia promising scrutiny, adds permitting, siting and regulatory work to the pile.
A Democratic Congress resets the risk map even as merger review stays friendly in Washington. More investigations and subpoenas aimed at private equity, crypto and the firms that cut deals with the administration feed white-collar, investigations and compliance desks, while the flip of Texas's high court and the lame-duck rush to confirm federal judges reshape where companies choose to litigate.
The deal slate keeps sell-side, antitrust and financing teams busy: AstraZeneca-Rhythm, Kraft Heinz's coffee sale, the CVC-IFF financing and the blocked SoftBank-ABB deal all turn on regulatory execution, with cross-border review, in Beijing, Brussels and London as much as Washington, the throughline under most of them.
Global Markets
A Democratic sweep turned into an everything rally, and clients are rereading the macro map.
Executives and treasurers are weighing a divided Washington that markets read as pro-stability: stocks had their best day since August, the ten-year fell to 4.89% and oil dropped about 8% on bets the Iran war ends sooner. Dealmakers are positioning for still-friendly antitrust review but tougher congressional oversight of AI, crypto and data centers, while CFOs watch Friday's payrolls for the Fed's next move.
Selected Press:
Democrats took at least 228 House and 54 Senate seats; the S&P 500 rose 1.58% and megacaps added close to $1 trillion as investors bet a split Congress slows AI capital spending.
The ten-year Treasury eased to 4.89% and the VIX fell below 17, with Treasury keeping next week's refunding steady at $125 billion.
Oil slid about 8%, with Brent near the mid-$90s, as Trump played down near-term strikes on Iran and mediation continued through Qatar.
The Bank of England raised rates to 4%, its first hike since 2023, and signaled another could follow in December.
Stories to Watch
October Nonfarm Payrolls (Friday) — forecast near 65,000; the week's marquee labor print and a key input for the Fed and deal confidence.
5th Circuit anti-ESG argument (today) — the court weighs Texas's law restricting state investment tied to fossil-fuel boycotts, a signal on ESG-mandate risk.
Lame-duck judicial confirmations — outgoing Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley has stacked hearings from November 10; an 8th Circuit confirmation would hand that court its first Trump-appointed majority before the Senate flips in January.
Anthropic IPO (week of November 16) — still targeted at a reported $1.5-2 trillion, the year's marquee listing as AI financing strains build.
Earnings from Airbnb and data-center lessor Iren — reads on consumer demand and the AI buildout that just lost some political cover.
US-Iran mediation via Qatar — a breakthrough would extend oil's slide and reshape energy-sector 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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