‘Freshfields bags Green on M&S bid.’ So read the headline to a story that appeared in Legal Week on 28 May, 2004, which revealed the firm’s role advising Green’s consortium on his putative bid for Marks & Spencer.

How the firm must now regret accepting that particular instruction. The immediate fall-out came just a few days later when Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer was embarrassingly thrown off the deal by the courts for acting in a conflict of interest situation (see comment).