Lawyers 679
Turnover Not disclosed
Offices 4
The firm has this year been giving legal advice amid banking disasters that have echoes of the 2008 financial crisis. It advised Silicon Valley Bank UK after the collapse in March of its parent company, a California-based lender that counted many tech start-ups and venture capital firms as clients.
The decision of US regulators to shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) represented the second-biggest banking collapse in US history. Its UK branch — now rebranded as HSBC Innovation Banking — played a significant role in this country’s technology and venture capital industry. Slaughter and May advised the UK branch on the consequences for its financial position.
Fears unleashed by the SVB collapse swept across the Atlantic and hit the Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group. The bank’s shares hit a record low amid a market rout that resulted in its sale to its rival UBS in an emergency rescue deal orchestrated by the Swiss authorities. Slaughter and May advised HM Treasury on the implications of the crisis of confidence in Credit Suisse.
Elsewhere, it advised Cineworld regarding its financial restructuring, as the company transferred its assets to a private corporate entity after it was forced to file for bankruptcy protection in America in September 2022. The world’s second-biggest cinema chain, formerly a public company, was restructuring via a debt-for-equity swap that was to hand control of its assets to its lenders, with an equity raising of $800 million and $1.46 billion in new debt financing. Three consultants from AlixPartners UK were appointed as joint administrators of Cineworld Group and are also being advised by Slaughter and May.
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The firm advises Aviva on its acquisition of AIG’s British income protection and life insurance business for £460 million. The insurer said that its purchase of AIG Life would result in it acquiring 1.3 million individual protection customers and 1.4 million group customers. It was buying the business from Corebridge Financial, a company owned by AIG and listed in New York. The transaction, subject to closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, is expected to complete in 2024.
It also advises Vodafone Group on its £18 billion merger with Three, as two of Britain’s biggest telecoms companies seek to consolidate the mobile market. Three — owned by CK Hutchison, a conglomerate based in Hong Kong — wants to combine with Vodafone, its bigger rival, in the UK in a deal that would create the country’s largest mobile operator with about 28 million customers. The Competition and Markets Authority will launch a formal investigation, to assess the potential impact of a merger on competition, after the plans were announced in June.
Slaughter and May, which says it has more FTSE 350 clients than any other law firm, has announced targets for a quarter of its workforce to have come from lower social backgrounds in the next decade, in a move it says makes it the first “magic circle” player to set such a mission. In July, the proportion of people from lower social backgrounds at the firm was 18.8 per cent.
★ Commended for banking & finance; commercial dispute resolution; company & commercial; financial crime & fraud & regulatory; mergers & acquisitions; tax
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