Legal Roundup: It Has Been a Kind Year

Let the truth be told: times are pretty good for maritime law firms worldwide. There appears to be enough work on the “closing room” table for everyone.

Lawyers, of course, take their cues from their clients. To wit, the dramatic increase in the amount of structured finance being offered by banks and other financial institutions today has generated tremendous demand for legal services. Just this week we read that even the Royal Bank of Scotland was now jumping into the fray by offering “investment banking” services. Well, big capital markets deals mean higher fees for their originators, as well as higher fees for lawyers on both sides of the table.

We refer not only to the better publicized public equity offerings of Nordic American Tanker Shipping and Knightsbridge Tankers with their entire squadrons of attorneys representing a multitude of interests too long to list here, but to the surge in lower profile deals, in particular, cross-border tax leases involving the UK, France,The Netherlands and the United States. Syndication is also very much in vogue.

This is only an excerpt of Legal Roundup: It Has Been a Kind Year

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