Nobody knew it at the time, but when King & Spalding’s New York head, Michael O’Brien, told a Legal Week roundtable, on succeeding in New York on 5 February, that firms in growth mode had to be active “right now”, he will have had something specific in mind.
Just a few days after the session, held in association with the management consultant Alan Hodgart, he was busily announcing to the world his office’s hire of the co-leader of Clifford Chance’s US banking and financial restructuring practice, Robert Finley.
