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Weil Gotshal is in merger talks as corporate and London partners head for the exits, a rare sign of strain at a top New York firm. Kirkland, Paul Hastings and A&O Shearman kept poaching litigation and finance partners, and Ashurst Perkins Coie planted a flag in Houston’s energy market.
On the client side, dealmaking is firming up: Roche struck a $15 billion cancer-drug tie-up with Hansoh, Merck is buying Silence Therapeutics, and Kimberly-Clark sold $4.9 billion of bonds to fund its Kenvue takeover. Chipmakers pulled the Nasdaq off its worst week since April, though credit jitters around CoreWeave lingered.
France’s bond risk jumped after violent protests, Brent held near $110, and traders rebuilt bets on a Fed hike.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Weil Gotshal in merger talks as corporate and London partners exit for Cravath, Sullivan & Cromwell and Simpson Thacher
-Kirkland lands Susman trial star Kaplan; Paul Hastings takes a Sheppard Mullin litigation trio; A&O adds New York finance partners
-Ashurst Perkins Coie opens in Houston; Snell & Wilmer launches Mexico City
-Deal flow firms up: Roche-Hansoh $15B, Merck-Silence $1.1B, Ares-KKR railcar sale, Silgan-Trivium $3.4B
-Goldman and Evercore pitch ‘forever’ continuation funds as PE chases liquidity
-OpenAI hit with a wave of state-AG safety suits; Kroger-Albertsons $8B merger-failure trial opens
-AI-agent hack breaches 100-plus sites at about $50 each; US sanctions Chinese entities over Google IP theft
-France bond risk spikes, Brent near $110, Fed-hike bets build before next week’s FOMC
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Kirkland & Ellis hired veteran trial lawyer Alex Kaplan from Susman Godfrey in Houston.
Paul Hastings took a three-partner complex-litigation team — Craig Cardon, Abby Meyer and Jay Ramsey — from Sheppard Mullin in California.
A&O Shearman added debt finance and capital markets partners Christopher Kwan and Dan O’Shea in New York.
Weil Gotshal recruited antitrust partner Yuni Yan Sobel from Paul Weiss in New York, even as it fields departures of its own.
Hunton Andrews Kurth brought on commercial litigator Chalon N. Clark from Husch Blackwell in Dallas.
Ashurst Perkins Coie hired Bracewell energy-deals partner Thomas Tomlinson to lead its new Houston office, joining real estate partner Tamara McKinzie.
What today's moves tell us: firms are paying up for litigation and finance benches and planting flags in energy hubs, even as one of the elite New York shops shows strain.
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Operations and Strategy
The strain and the expansion are showing up at once: a marquee New York firm is weighing a merger while others build in new cities.
Weil Gotshal & Manges is in merger talks and has told some practice-group leaders it is negotiating a memorandum of understanding with another firm, with an announcement possible within the week, though the talks could still collapse. The move follows a run of departures: former corporate chief Michael Aiello is leaving for Cravath, partners have gone to Paul Weiss and Simpson Thacher, and in London, M&A partner David Avery-Gee left for Sullivan & Cromwell, finance head Tom Richards is expected at Simpson Thacher, and former corporate co-managing partner Michael Hickey is also expected to move to Sullivan & Cromwell.
Ashurst Perkins Coie is powering up its Houston launch with Bracewell energy partner Thomas Tomlinson as managing partner, and Snell & Wilmer opened a Mexico City office with a four-partner group showing how firms are planting flags where energy and cross-border work is growing.
Freshfields drew fresh reputational heat after leaked emails showed leadership describing Gulf sovereign wealth funds as not "sophisticated," an awkward turn for a firm pushing hard into US and Gulf money.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Private Equity
Dealmakers are leaning back in. A run of strategic and cross-border transactions, paired with activist pressure and new fund structures, is widening the mandate pipeline across corporate, capital-markets and private-equity desks.
Selected Press:
Roche struck a $15 billion partnership and licensing deal with China's Hansoh Pharmaceutical for targeted cancer therapies.
Merck agreed to buy UK biotech Silence Therapeutics for $1.1 billion cash, a 130% premium.
Ares will acquire railcar-leasing firm Infinity Transportation from KKR for $2.9 billion.
Silgan Holdings agreed to buy Europe's Trivium Packaging from OTPP and Ardagh for $3.4 billion.
Kimberly-Clark raised $4.9 billion of bonds to help fund its $36 billion purchase of Tylenol maker Kenvue.
Foxconn will take a 50% stake in Mitsubishi Electric's automotive-components unit for $727 million.
H.B. Fuller rejected activist Ancora's improved $1.2–$1.4 billion bid for its building-adhesives unit.
Goldman Sachs and Evercore are pitching 'forever' evergreen continuation funds to private equity, and EnCap raised a $3.5 billion energy fund.
Antitrust and Litigation
Large deals are drawing scrutiny, and the sharpest fights are now over deals that didn't close. The market has seen this cycle before, a blocked or collapsed mergers become the next wave of damages claims.
Selected Press:
Albertsons' $8 billion trial against Kroger opened in Delaware over their failed $24.6 billion merger, with Albertsons arguing Kroger sandbagged regulatory approval.
OpenAI faces a wave of consumer-safety suits from state attorneys general and plaintiffs' firms in West Virginia, Iowa, and North Carolina, accusing it of letting minors access harmful content.
Uber won dismissal of a £250 million ($333 million) London black-cab drivers' suit after a judge ruled the claims time-barred.
White Collar, Investigations and National Security
Cross-border enforcement and espionage risk are generating sensitive, fast-moving mandates for white-collar and national-security desks.
Selected Press:
Prosecutors say the former OpenAI employee accused of planting a recording device, Abdulrahman Alfozan, had Saudi royal family ties, adding a counterintelligence dimension to the case.
The US sanctioned five Chinese entities tied to Linwei Ding, the ex-Google engineer convicted of stealing AI trade secrets, the first sanctions linked to an AI trade-secret prosecution.
The DOJ's bankruptcy watchdog said 11 new cases need not be folded into the Jackson Walker romance-conflict litigation.
Cybersecurity and Data Privacy
Cheap, automated attacks and fresh breach settlements are pushing cyber and privacy work from the back office into deal diligence and board-level risk.
Selected Press:
A single hacker used AI agents and about $5,000 to breach more than 100 sites (roughly $50 each) including ones tied to major firms, showing that attack costs are collapsing faster than defenses can adapt.
California settled 23andMe data-breach claims for $6 million.
Where the Work Sits
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The deal cluster points straight at corporate, capital-markets and acquisition-finance desks. Roche-Hansoh, Merck-Silence, Ares-Infinity, Silgan-Trivium and Kimberly-Clark-Kenvue each need counsel on both sides, plus antitrust filings, regulatory clearances and, in the cross-border deals, multi-jurisdiction structuring. The bond raises funding those deals generate their own mandates.
The liquidity squeeze in private equity is creating its own mandate stream. Evergreen continuation funds and vehicles like EnCap's $3.5 billion raise need fund-formation, tax-structuring and LP-side counsel; activist campaigns (Ancora-H.B. Fuller, Elliott in the background) add proxy-fight and M&A-defense work.
Litigation demand is concentrating where deals fail and where AI meets consumers. The Kroger-Albertsons trial turns a broken merger into a multi-billion-dollar courtroom fight. OpenAI's AG suits and the hacker-breach story point to a widening consumer-harm and cyber docket that will feed plaintiffs' firms, state-AG practices and in-house compliance teams.
Enforcement and security work is the other growth lane. Espionage allegations, China-linked sanctions and export-control prosecutions are pulling in national-security, white-collar and trade-controls lawyers, often on compressed timelines with classified-information overlays.
Global Markets
Markets are caught between an AI-driven rebound and rising rates. Dealmakers and fund managers are weighing financing windows carefully: a chip-led bounce reopened risk appetite even as Treasuries sold off and geopolitical risk stayed elevated.
Selected Press:
Chip stocks led a rebound, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up 1.6% and snapping an eight-day slide, though roundtrip volatility since April is more than 40% in some names.
Treasuries sold off, pushing the 10-year near 5.1%, as BofA held to its call for a Fed hike next week against an 85% market bet on a hold — a gap that will move bond, loan and structured-finance pricing.
French bond risk jumped, with the risk gauge hitting 150 basis points after violent protests complicated budget plans.
Brent crude held near $110 as Iran's blockaded Kharg Island terminals stayed empty.
The US budget deficit neared $2 trillion as corporate tax receipts fell 15%, and the CBO flagged a looming Social Security funding cliff in 2032.
Stories to Watch
Earnings this week — SpaceX, Netflix, RTX, GM and 3M today; Tesla, Meta and IBM Wednesday; Blackstone Thursday. A read on deal appetite, AI capex and defense spending.
FOMC decision (next week) — BofA sees a hike, the market a hold; the call shapes financing, refinancing and restructuring timelines.
French protests resume — a live sovereign-debt and political-risk watch after the bond-risk spike.
US midterms (about two weeks out) — Mizuho expects the House to flip Democratic, which would mean more oversight and investigation risk for tech, energy and financial-services clients.
Anthropic IPO — the company committed at least 5% of equity to a public-benefit fund, a governance wrinkle to watch ahead of the listing.
Social Security's 2032 funding cliff — a slow-building fiscal and bond-market risk now entering the political horizon.
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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