Good afternoon,
White & Case is hiring Gail Slater, President Trump’s ousted antitrust chief, while the lateral market keeps churning: Gibson Dunn, Haynes Boone, Reed Smith and Kilpatrick all added partners. Massumi + Consoli partners took pay cuts to fund a back-office stake sale, and a former McDermott chair argued Big Law should scrap the billable hour.
On the client side, the bond rout deepened. The 30-year Treasury hit 5.6%, a 24-year high, as Paramount Skydance launched a $32bn bond sale, UniCredit moved on Commerzbank, and Apollo and Oaktree sued Patrick Drahi over Optimum’s debt shuffle. Trump renamed AI “super intelligence”.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Slater joins White & Case; Gibson Dunn, Haynes Boone, Reed Smith, Kilpatrick and Greenberg Traurig add partners; Mintz names a new managing partner
-Massumi + Consoli partners take pay cuts to fund a back-office sale to Trive Capital; Sacripanti calls to end the billable hour
-Paramount Skydance kicks off a $32bn bond sale for Warner Bros. Discovery; OpenAI eyes a $30bn pre-IPO round; Oura postpones its IPO
-Apollo and Oaktree sue Patrick Drahi over Optimum; PHL policyholders sue Golden Gate Capital; the SEC flags hard-to-value private assets
-Nvidia courts insurers to backstop AI-chip lending; two-thirds of institutions plan to add infrastructure and private equity
-UniCredit moves on Commerzbank; Germany blocks a COSCO deal; Israel objects to the ZIM sale; RHI Magnesita bids for Vesuvius
-3rd Circuit upholds Thomson Reuters’ AI-training win over Ross Intelligence; Anthropic flags rogue-agent legal risk
-30-year Treasury hits 5.6%; consumer confidence at a 12-year low; ECB pressure builds as French and Italian inflation overshoot
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
White & Case is hiring Gail Slater, President Trump’s former DOJ antitrust chief, as a partner in Washington; she was removed in February over merger-policy disagreements.
Gibson Dunn added energy and infrastructure partner Raymond Azar in New York.
Haynes Boone hired Vinson & Elkins arbitration partner Louise Woods as chair of international disputes in London.
Reed Smith took emerging-technologies partner Kate Campbell from Neal Gerber & Eisenberg in Chicago.
Greenberg Traurig added labor and employment shareholder Allison Oasis Kahn from Carlton Fields in West Palm Beach.
Kilpatrick hired employee benefits and tax partner Michele Alexander in New York.
Mintz named corporate partner Michael Fantozzi managing partner, succeeding Bob Bodian after 18 years.
What today's moves tell us: firms are buying ex-regulators, disputes and energy-infrastructure talent, and reaching into rivals and boutiques as high-end demand stays concentrated at the top of the market.
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 testing new ways to pay for technology and rethinking how they bill.
Massumi + Consoli partners agreed to take pay cuts to fund a sale of the boutique’s back-office functions to Trive Capital, rolling the administrative operations into a new entity, ElevenHundred+. Partners who invest receive shares that firm leaders expect to gain value ahead of a future sale. The trade-off shows the obstacle facing firms eyeing back-office deals to cover rising technology costs: convincing partners to give up pay now while lateral compensation keeps climbing.
Former McDermott chair Peter Sacripanti, now chair of Broadfield Holdings, argued the billable hour “can be eliminated entirely” in favor of fixed pricing agreed with clients in advance. Generative AI is forcing firms to decide whether they sell hours or outcomes, and how they get paid when the hours shrink but the value does not. KPMG, Latham & Watkins, Ashurst Perkins Coie and Troutman Pepper Locke signed on to Relativity’s claiR AI assistant, and Disney is recruiting a director of AI enablement to redesign its legal workflows.
Practices
Corporate M&A and Private Equity
Dealmakers are moving on banks, chemicals, pharma and industrials at once, and contested or rejected bids are keeping boards and advisers engaged. This is a buyer-led market, where acquirers that did the analytical work through the slow stretch move decisively as assets come loose, pointing to sell-side, financing and merger-control mandates for the dealmaking elite. Nearly two-thirds of institutional investors told IFM they plan to add infrastructure and private-equity exposure over the next three to five years, a sign capital keeps flowing toward sponsors and their counsel.
Selected Press:
UniCredit is preparing to seize control and overhaul the board of $50bn German lender Commerzbank by January.
Credit Agricole is studying a takeover of $28bn Italian lender Banco BPM, in which it already holds 30%.
Piper Sandler is in talks to merge with Perella Weinberg Partners, combining two mid-market advisory firms.
RHI Magnesita made a cash-and-stock offer for UK engineer Vesuvius with backing from activist Cevian Capital, sending the shares up 32%.
Novo Nordisk agreed to pay up to $2.6bn for Chinese drugmaker Hengrui’s obesity pill, and AstraZeneca is investing $2bn in Summit Therapeutics.
Salesforce agreed to buy AI research firm Listen Labs for $2bn.
Capital Markets and Private Credit
Issuers are pushing financings through even as the 30-year Treasury clears 5.6%, while slowing distributions and stressed borrowers keep restructuring desks busy. Recent credit scares have tended to start as funding and liquidity problems before they become credit-quality ones, and this week’s cluster — a contested liability-management fight at Optimum and the SEC’s warning on hard-to-value private assets — fits that mold, keeping capital-markets, fund-finance and workout teams busy for sponsors and their lenders.
Selected Press:
Paramount Skydance kicked off a $32bn investment-grade bond sale, the largest slice of a $52bn package for its $110bn Warner Bros. Discovery purchase; a separate $7.5bn loan drew $11.5bn of demand.
OpenAI is in early talks to raise $30bn before a 2027 IPO at a roughly $1.4tn valuation, as annualized revenue nears $70bn.
Oura postponed its $2.2bn IPO despite being four times oversubscribed, joining a wave of delayed listings.
Nvidia is courting insurers, hedge funds and asset managers to backstop lending against its AI chips, aiming to turn AI infrastructure into an investable asset class.
The SEC sent a “critical” reminder to fund managers on valuing hard-to-value private assets, and the Treasury threatened a crackdown on Wall Street tax-avoidance strategies.
Restructuring and Special Situations
Creditors are testing how far sponsors can go in moving assets beyond their reach, and insurer-owned balance sheets are drawing fire. For general counsel and fund managers, the fights point to liability-management, creditor-rights and fiduciary-duty work.
Selected Press:
Apollo and Oaktree sued Patrick Drahi personally, alleging he moved Optimum’s most valuable Cablevision assets — backed by $3bn from JPMorgan — beyond creditors’ reach; Optimum calls the creditor group an illegal cartel.
PHL Variable Insurance policyholders sued private-equity owner Golden Gate Capital for self-dealing amid a $2.2bn shortfall that could force liquidation.
Brightline creditors owed $1bn by the bankrupt Florida rail operator agreed to join a balance-sheet restructuring.
Litigation, IP and AI Governance
Courts are drawing early lines on AI liability and training data just as Washington leans on the industry to police itself. For boards and general counsel, that makes AI oversight, copyright strategy and product-liability planning standing workstreams.
Selected Press:
The 3rd Circuit upheld Thomson Reuters’ copyright win over Ross Intelligence, a marker for how courts treat AI training on protected material.
Anthropic told IPO investors that rogue AI agents could expose it to untested legal claims, as platform-style immunity faces product-liability theories.
Netlist asked the ITC to block imports of Micron memory chips used in Google, Nvidia and Broadcom AI products, alleging patent infringement.
Bayer faces a fresh trial test of remaining Roundup claims after its Supreme Court win, and Big Oil is again asking the justices to shield it from climate suits.
Where the Work Sits
***
Nvidia’s move to pull insurers into chip lending and institutions’ plans to add infrastructure exposure are less a surprise than the next step, and they point to more structured-finance, project-finance and fund-formation work.
UniCredit’s push on Commerzbank, Credit Agricole’s study of Banco BPM, the Piper Sandler–Perella talks and the Vesuvius contest drive cross-border M&A, antitrust and merger-control work, with financing teams close behind. Germany’s block of a COSCO sale and Israel’s objection to the ZIM deal add foreign-investment and national-security review.
The Optimum fight, the Golden Gate insurance suit and the SEC’s valuation warning keep liability-management, creditor-rights, fund-finance and disclosure counsel in demand, and rising yields pull refinancing and workout timelines forward.
The Thomson Reuters win over Ross, Anthropic’s rogue-agent disclosure and the Netlist chip fight point to more copyright, product-liability and IP work, while the White House’s voluntary “super intelligence” accord leaves compliance strategy to boards and their counsel.
Global Markets
Rising yields and sticky inflation are setting the tone, and treasurers and boards are repricing plans. Clients are weighing whether to pull financing forward as the 30-year Treasury hits 5.6%, a 24-year high, and US consumer confidence sinks to a 12-year low. Decision-makers are tracking a hawkish turn in Europe as French and Italian inflation overshoot and French borrowing costs climb before Thursday’s budget, while dealmakers watch China drip-feed stimulus and Gulf producers route oil around the Strait of Hormuz.
Selected Press:
The 30-year Treasury yield reached 5.6%, munis headed for their worst month in 40 years, and the euro fell to a 16-month low.
French and Italian inflation overshot forecasts, raising pressure on the ECB, as France’s 10-year risk premium hit 120 basis points before a record €340bn 2027 bond plan.
China’s factory activity expanded for the first time since June after Beijing added targeted property and lending support, and Beijing vowed to retaliate against broad EU tariffs.
Middle East crude exports rebounded to nearly 13m barrels a day as Gulf producers bypassed Hormuz.
Stories to Watch
US August PCE, final Q2 GDP and personal income and spending (today) — the clearest read on a hawkish Fed.
September jobs report (Friday) and ISM Manufacturing PMI (Thursday) — labor and growth signals that feed rate and deal expectations.
France’s 2027 budget (Thursday) — a record bond plan and a 120bp risk premium put French debt in focus.
US Court of International Trade hearing (today) on Trump’s forced-labor tariffs — a test of tariff power the Supreme Court curbed in February.
Senate Judiciary hearing on six Trump judicial nominees — including a pick that would give the 8th Circuit its first Trump-appointed majority.
Micron earnings (today) and Nike and Accenture (Thursday) — reads on AI memory demand and corporate spending.
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].
