Podcast appearances and mentions of allen overy

This Day in Legal History: First Year with No LynchingsOn December 30, 1952, the Tuskegee Institute released a landmark report marking the first recorded year without a lynching of African Americans in the United States since the institute began keeping records in 1881. The grim practice of lynching—extrajudicial killings often carried out by mobs to enforce racial subjugation—had claimed thousands of lives, becoming a chilling emblem of racial terror, particularly in the Southern United States. Tuskegee's data captured the scope of this violence, documenting nearly 4,000 lynchings of Black individuals over the prior seven decades.The significance of 1952 as a year without reported lynchings underscored the impact of growing civil rights activism, the waning influence of vigilante groups, and increasing legal accountability. This milestone also reflected shifts in public attitudes and the effectiveness of organizations like the NAACP, which tirelessly campaigned against lynching and for federal anti-lynching legislation. Despite this progress, racial violence and discrimination persisted in other forms, underscoring that the end of lynching did not mean the end of systemic racism."Strange Fruit," a haunting protest song famously recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, had kept the horrors of lynching at the forefront of public consciousness. Its stark imagery of "black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze" served as a chilling reminder of the atrocities endured by Black Americans. While the 1952 milestone was a cause for solemn reflection, it was also a call to sustain the fight for racial justice and equality in a nation still grappling with deep-seated prejudices.Rupert Murdoch and other senior leaders of Fox Corporation will face claims from investors alleging personal responsibility for financial harm stemming from false election conspiracy theories aired by Fox News. Delaware Chancery Court's Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster denied Fox's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, stating that the plaintiffs had sufficiently argued that Murdoch could likely be held liable for knowingly permitting defamatory content to be broadcast. The lawsuit follows Fox's record-breaking settlement with Dominion Voting Systems and comes as Smartmatic pursues a separate $2 billion defamation suit. The investors claim that the leadership's actions and decisions led to significant economic fallout, asserting that corporate governance failures allowed reputational and financial damage to occur. While the court's decision enables the case to proceed, it does not guarantee success for the plaintiffs, leaving the ultimate outcome of the claims to trial.Fox, Murdoch, Execs Must Face Election Defamation Payout SuitA federal appeals court upheld a $5 million verdict against Donald Trump in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, who accused him of sexual assault and defamation. The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, stems from a 2023 jury verdict that found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the 1990s and defaming her in a 2022 Truth Social post. While jurors did not find Trump guilty of rape, they awarded Carroll $2.02 million for sexual assault and $2.98 million for defamation.Carroll has also secured an $83.3 million defamation verdict from a separate jury in January 2024, which Trump is appealing. These legal battles persist despite Trump's return to the presidency following his 2024 election victory. Trump's defense argued that the trial judge improperly allowed testimony from two other women alleging past misconduct and included the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape as evidence. Both trials were overseen by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. This case continues to highlight the lack of immunity for sitting presidents in civil litigation unrelated to their official duties, following a precedent set during Bill Clinton's presidency.Trump loses appeal of E. Jean Carroll $5 million defamation verdict | ReutersThe oil and gas industry is facing increasing legal and legislative pressure over its role in climate change. States like New York and Vermont have enacted “climate Superfund” laws, with New York's targeting $75 billion from major polluters over 25 years to fund climate mitigation efforts. Meanwhile, multiple states and cities have filed lawsuits alleging misinformation campaigns by fossil fuel companies about climate change and plastic pollution. These efforts, while separate, are creating a coordinated front against the industry and building evidence to attribute emissions to specific companies.Experts suggest that legislative efforts like climate Superfund laws and lawsuits may bolster each other by generating an evidentiary record for liability. However, there are concerns about overstepping legal boundaries, as courts may reject overlapping claims for damages under federal laws like the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). Fossil fuel companies argue that climate-specific laws conflict with existing federal laws such as the Clean Air Act and may face challenges in implementation.The American Petroleum Institute and energy companies have expressed resistance to these legal actions, with a preference for fighting rather than settling claims. While states hope to hold polluters accountable, the success of these strategies remains uncertain as courts, lawmakers, and the industry test the boundaries of new legal frameworks.Climate Liability Laws, Litigation Add to Oil Industry HeadacheThe legal industry is set for another wave of consolidation in 2025, with several major law firm mergers scheduled for January 1. Among these, Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders will merge with Locke Lord to create Troutman Pepper Locke, a firm with 1,600 attorneys and projected annual revenues exceeding $1.5 billion. Similarly, Womble Bond Dickinson is merging with Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie, combining to form a 1,300-lawyer firm with $742 million in revenues. Taft Stettinius & Hollister is joining with Sherman & Howard, projecting revenues of $810 million for the merged entity.Philadelphia-based Ballard Spahr will combine with Lane Powell, forming a 750-lawyer firm operating in 18 U.S. offices. These moves follow 41 law firm mergers in the first nine months of 2024, with industry analysts predicting continued activity next year. Firms are responding to client demand for broader services and geographic reach, as businesses increasingly consolidate their legal needs with fewer providers. Smaller and midsize firms are pursuing mergers to access new markets and clients, while the most profitable firms focus on lateral hires and internal growth. Rising costs, including attorney salaries and investment in generative AI technologies, are also pressuring firms to consolidate. Transatlantic mergers are gaining momentum as well, with U.K.-based firms like Allen & Overy and Herbert Smith Freehills expanding into the U.S. market through deals with Shearman & Sterling and Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, respectively. These global mergers highlight the evolving competitive landscape in the legal sector.Law firms' quest for market share drives New Year's merger wave | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Octopus Real Estate is a specialist investor, developer and lender with a keen focus on the living and healthcare sectors. Under Ed's leadership, Octopus Real Estate oversees a staggering £3.7 billion worth of assets, for both institutional and retail clients. Ed joined Octopus in 2017 and previously led the Care Homes and Corporate Development teams. Prior to joining Octopus, he was a lawyer with international law firm Allen & Overy and he holds a BA in Economics from Durham University and an MBA from the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School. I sat down with Ed to discuss a broad range of subjects which covered some of the following topics: * Early career moves * How he got into real estate * European expansion plans * Fundraising & structures * Building a high-performing team * Care homes, Retirement, Affordable & lending * Ambition to grow Octopus AUM from £13bn to £50bn by 2030 Oh and one last question - who are the People, what Property, and in which Place Ed would invest should he have £500m of equity at his disposal. Catch the full episode which will be live on Youtube, Spotify and Apple NOW! The People Property Place Podcast

Caroline Flanagan is a transformational coach, an inspirational keynote speaker, the author of two books and host of two podcasts. A magic circle trained ex-City lawyer, Caroline's mission is to bring greater diversity, equality and inclusion to the legal industry by increasing the number of people of colour who stay in the profession and progress to leadership. A woman of colour from a low income background, Caroline learned to navigate the challenges of being the only one in the room and achieve success in a white world. She is a recognised expert on Imposter Syndrome and specialises in career progression coaching for black lawyers. Caroline has had the pleasure of working with many of the world's leading law firms, including: Allen & Overy, White & Case, Mayer Brown, Latham & Watkins, Kirkland & Ellis, Ropes & Gray, Ashurst, Eversheds Sutherland and Weil, Gotshal & Manges. She has also worked with some of the world's most recognised organisations and brands, including: Morgan Stanley, Google, Accenture, Michael Kors, Shell and Starbucks.   Caroline is the author of the following books: – Be The First: People of Colour, Imposter Syndrome and the Struggle to Succeed in a White World (2022) – Business Book of the Year Awards finalist, and BabyProof Your Career: The Secret to Balancing Work and Family So You Can Enjoy It All (2015) Caroline's 3 mindset messages: Be the first You are uniquely valuable The conditions are never perfect The Food I have to quote Caroline's words for this part when I asked her what she would like me to cook for her, to explain why I chose this meal: ” I don't think I've been asked that question in a VERY long time. My sincere answer is anything you want to! But if it's more helpful for me to specify: I love Mediterranean food. Light, healthy and delicious. Fish would be delightful (altho I also eat meat) with something grainy or pulsey on the side perhaps.”  I love it when I get a challenge and get to experiment with new culinary recipes! I wanted to include all of the above to Caroline's meal and I decide to make Japanese infused salmon fillet, with buckwheat, roasted vegetables, cucumber & coconut yoghurt salad on a side. It was a very nourishing meal and Caroline enjoyed my creation.   Visit www.mindsetkitchen.co.uk for more information.

This Day in Legal History: Flag Statutes in Public SchoolsOn this day in legal history, June 14, 1943, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, profoundly impacting the rights of individuals in public schools. The case arose when Jehovah's Witnesses challenged a West Virginia mandate requiring students to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, actions contrary to their religious convictions. The Court ruled that forcing students to participate in patriotic rituals violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Justice Robert H. Jackson, writing for the majority, asserted that compelling students to salute the flag was a form of coerced speech that infringed upon their individual liberties. The decision overturned the 1940 ruling in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, which had upheld mandatory flag salutes. Jackson famously stated, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official... can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion."This ruling reinforced the principle that the government cannot force individuals to express beliefs they do not hold. It underscored the protection of individual freedoms against state-imposed conformity, significantly shaping the interpretation of First Amendment rights in the educational context. The Barnette decision remains a cornerstone in American constitutional law, symbolizing the enduring protection of individual liberties in the face of governmental authority.Large national law firms are increasingly establishing offices in Boston, potentially overshadowing local firms that have operated regionally for decades. This year, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Paul Hastings, and Blank Rome announced new Boston offices, while Covington & Burling, Arnold & Porter, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld did so last year. In a notable move, Goodwin Procter recently recruited a five-partner tech and life sciences team from Cooley in Boston, signaling a consolidation trend in legal services within these sectors. The health and energy industries have remained strong in a sluggish deals market, bolstered by the financial strength of health care giants and incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act.The number of law firm openings in Boston has surged over the past decade, with over 40 firms establishing a presence since 2016. This influx includes regulatory-focused firms like Covington and UK-based Magic Circle firms such as Allen & Overy. As large firms move in, regional firms face the risk of losing talent and clients.Despite these developments, the efforts of new Big Law entrants in Boston remain in their early stages, with firms like Simpson Thacher planning deliberate growth to tap into the city's talent pool.Big Law Firms Eye Boston to Tap Hot Tech, Health Care MarketsThe Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has three new commissioners, which could influence the review process for natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. Industry advocates argue these projects are essential to meet rising electricity demand, while environmental groups push for rejection due to the long-term climate impacts of fossil fuels. The newly confirmed commissioners—Democrats David Rosner and Judy Chang, and Republican Lindsay See—join FERC at a critical time. With Commissioner Allison Clements' upcoming departure, FERC will regain a 3-2 Democratic majority for the first time in 18 months.Historically, FERC's decisions on natural gas have been contentious, with a 2022 policy to scrutinize gas projects leading to the end of former Chairman Richard Glick's tenure. The new commissioners have indicated a focus on gas infrastructure, despite past environmental concerns. Chang, for example, moderated her previous stance against new gas pipelines during her confirmation hearing.FERC's decisions are crucial amid growing electricity demands, driven by factors like artificial intelligence and increased manufacturing. Natural gas consumption is at record highs, and new power generation, particularly from gas, is necessary to meet future needs. However, permitting reviews and litigation have slowed the expansion of pipeline capacity. Industry experts stress the need for regulatory certainty to align infrastructure with demand, a sentiment echoed by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. The new FERC commissioners face the challenge of balancing these competing interests as they begin their terms.Divisive Gas Reviews Pose Early Test for New FERC CommissionersOn June 13, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee advanced bipartisan legislation to create 66 new judgeships in federal district courts across states like California, Delaware, and Texas. This marks the first major judiciary expansion in over three decades. The committee's unanimous 20-0 vote moves the JUDGES Act to the full Senate for consideration. If enacted, it will be the first comprehensive authorization of new judges since 1990, addressing longstanding requests to manage rising caseloads in 25 district courts nationwide.The last time new judgeships were created was in 2003, but efforts to expand the federal bench have since stalled due to partisan concerns. The current bill mitigates these concerns by incrementally adding the new judicial seats over ten years, starting in January 2025, after the 2024 presidential election. This phased approach aims to prevent any single party or president from gaining an advantage.Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a co-sponsor of the bill, emphasized the urgency of expanding the federal bench to address the growing backlog of court filings since 1990. The JUDGES Act aligns with recommendations from the Judicial Conference, seeking to add judges in districts facing a "genuine crisis of workload."U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad expressed the judiciary's appreciation for the Senate's efforts. The judiciary currently has 677 authorized district court seats and 10 temporary ones, which another Senate-passed bill aims to make permanent.Initially opposed to adding more judges, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley supported the bill after amendments spread the additions over time. The JUDGES Act now plans to introduce the 66 new judgeships in five stages through 2035, with three temporary judgeships in Oklahoma.A companion bill is pending in the Republican-led House of Representatives, backed by Representative Darrell Issa, chair of the House Judiciary Committee's panel on courts.US Senate panel advances bipartisan bill to create new judgeships | ReutersThe proposed $30 billion antitrust settlement between Visa and Mastercard to limit credit and debit card fees for merchants is in jeopardy. U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie in Brooklyn indicated she is likely to reject the settlement, citing her intent to write an opinion detailing her decision. Both Visa and Mastercard expressed disappointment, describing the settlement as a fair and appropriate resolution to the nearly 19-year-old litigation.Announced on March 26, the settlement aimed to address most claims from nationwide litigation, with small businesses making up over 90% of the settling merchants. Businesses have long argued that Visa and Mastercard's swipe fees, which totaled $172 billion in 2023, are excessive and that the card networks illegally prevent them from steering customers to cheaper payment methods. The settlement proposed reducing swipe fees by at least 0.04 percentage points for three years, capping rates for five years, and removing anti-steering provisions.However, objectors, including the National Retail Federation, criticized the settlement as insufficient, arguing that it would still allow Visa and Mastercard to control swipe fees and prevent future claims by merchants. The case, known as In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation, is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.Visa, Mastercard $30 billion fee settlement in peril | ReutersThis week's closing theme is by John David Davis.John David Davis (22 October 1867 – 20 November 1942), often known as J. D. Davis, was an English composer born in Edgbaston, near Birmingham. Although he was born into a musical family, Davis was initially sent to Frankfurt to prepare for a commercial career. However, his passion for music led him to study under Hans von Bülow. Davis completed his education in Germany before furthering his studies in Brussels with Léopold Wallner, Arthur De Greef, and Maurice Kufferath.Upon returning to Birmingham in 1889, Davis began teaching music, notably at the Birmingham and Midland Institute from 1893 to 1904. In 1905, he joined the Guildhall School of Music as a professor of harmony and composition and also served as Professor of Solfège at the International Conservatoire in London.In 1919, Davis married Helen Winifred Juta, the daughter of South African judge Henry Juta. The couple lived in Earls Court, London, before moving to Lisbon in 1936. Davis passed away in Estoril, Portugal, in 1942, and his wife later returned to South Africa, where she died in 1952.This week's closing theme is John David Davis' evocative piece, "Summer's Eve at Cookham Lock, Op. 50." Composed in 1916 for the London String Quartet, this work captures the serene beauty of a summer evening at Cookham Lock. Known for its lyrical quality and gentle atmosphere, "Summer's Eve at Cookham Lock" offers a tranquil auditory experience.The piece, also known as an Idyl for string quartet, demonstrates Davis' ability to paint a vivid picture through music. Its delicate melodies and harmonies reflect the calm and reflective mood of a summer evening by the water. This composition stands as a testament to Davis' skill in creating evocative and picturesque musical landscapes, making it a fitting and soothing choice for this week's closing theme. Enjoy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

At an early age, Feargus MacDaeid, the founder of legal tech company Definely, was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, which is a rare eye disease that breaks down cells in the retina slowly over time causing vision loss. Until he got to college to study computer science, Feargus' vision was decent, but at university, it began to deteriorate and eventually went blind.  After college he landed a couple of tech jobs but ultimately decided to go to law school.  After law school, Feargus took jobs at two Magic Circle Firms in London, Allen & Overy and Freshfields where he was working on mergers and acquisitions.  Because of his visual impairment, Feargus had to develop hacks in the software he used, like custom keyboard shortcuts, to get his job done. He met his Definely co-founder, Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, at Freshfields when the two of them were working on the same deal. As Feargus explains it, his soon to be co-founder was the first colleague that actually took an interest in how Feargus accomplished his work and marveled that he was getting it done.  The two figured there had to be a better way for Feargus to work on contracts, but the duo figured out pretty quickly there really wasn't and Definely was born. Definely is a suite of tools that helps lawyers accomplish the tedious tasks relating to the drafting of contracts. As the company describes it, they create legal tech solutions to free lawyers from frustrating, repetitive tasks, so they can get back to the work that matters.

This Day in Legal History: Pledge of AllegianceOn December 28, 1945, a significant moment in American educational and legal history occurred when Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance, urging its recitation in schools nationwide. The Pledge, originally composed in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, was intended to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus Day. It underwent a critical change in 1954 when Congress added the words "under God," reflecting the era's heightened religious sentiment during the Cold War. This inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge later sparked legal challenges, notably involving Michael Newdow, who contested his daughter's school district's policy of daily Pledge recitation. Newdow argued that this practice infringed upon the separation of church and state. His case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which, in a pivotal decision, ruled that Newdow lacked standing, thereby not addressing the constitutional issue he raised.The legal journey of the Pledge of Allegiance illustrates the dynamic relationship between national identity, religion, and education in the United States. Over the years, the Pledge has been both a symbol of unity and a point of contention, reflecting the nation's evolving perspectives on patriotism and religious expression. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, among other institutions, has provided extensive resources and insights into the ongoing debates surrounding the Pledge.The recognition of the Pledge by Congress in 1945 marked a formal endorsement of a practice that had already taken root in many schools. It solidified the Pledge's role in American culture, embedding it into the daily lives of millions of students. This action by Congress highlighted the importance of patriotic rituals in fostering a sense of national unity, especially in the aftermath of World War II.Today, the Pledge remains a staple in many educational institutions, symbolizing allegiance to the nation while also serving as a reminder of the ongoing discussions about the role of religion in public life and the meaning of patriotism in a diverse society.Apple Inc. is engaged in a complex legal and technical battle following a U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling that some of its Apple Watch models infringed patents held by Masimo Corp., a medical-device maker. The ban initially led to a halt in U.S. sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, but Apple won a temporary reprieve from a federal appeals court, allowing the sales of these models to resume.Apple's multifaceted strategy to counter the ban includes appealing the ITC decision, developing software modifications to avoid patent infringement, and submitting these changes to U.S. customs for approval. The company hopes this approach will enable it to continue selling non-infringing versions of the devices. The Federal Circuit has given the ITC until January 10 to respond to Apple's request for a stay of the ban for the duration of the appeal process.Despite the current pause in enforcement of the ITC's decision, the import ban stands. The outcome of the upcoming Customs tribunal will be crucial, as a favorable decision would reinforce the ITC's original ruling and could impact the ongoing appeal. Apple's legal efforts are accompanied by attempts to find technical workarounds, such as software updates that might modify or disable the contested pulse-oximetry feature.This situation is unusual, as large companies like Apple typically settle such disputes rather than endure prolonged legal battles and sales disruptions. The company's assertive approach may indicate a strategic decision to demonstrate its unwillingness to settle in patent disputes. Apple is also pursuing legal action against Masimo in Delaware district court, alleging infringement by Masimo's W1 watch.The appeals court's pause is expected to last around three weeks, coinciding with Customs' decision on the redesigned products. If Apple does not receive a favorable ruling from Customs, it has the option to appeal to the US Court of International Trade and potentially further to the Federal Circuit. This protracted legal battle illustrates the intricate interplay between patent law, technological innovation, and corporate strategy.Apple's ‘Unusual' Watch Fight Continues After Pause on BanIn 2023, New York's legal scene, often a trendsetter for the U.S. legal industry, experienced significant changes and challenges, raising questions for the year ahead. Two of New York's oldest law firms, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan and Shearman & Sterling, faced major transitions. Stroock is dissolving, while Shearman plans a merger with Allen & Overy, indicating a shift in the legal landscape.These developments reflect broader industry headwinds such as intense competition for talent, inconsistent client demand, and a slowdown in the global mergers-and-acquisitions market. Consolidation became a notable trend, with numerous law firm mergers throughout 2023, including high-profile combinations like Maynard Cooper & Gale with Nexsen Pruet, and Holland & Knight with Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis. A total of 41 law firm combinations were completed in the first three quarters of 2023, compared to 37 in the same period in 2022.In response to a slower growth environment and cost pressures, small and regional law firms are expected to pursue more mergers and acquisitions in 2024. Meanwhile, the end of 2023 saw major law firms, starting with New York's Milbank, raising associate salaries, with first-year associates now starting at $225,000. These salary hikes have raised concerns about whether less profitable firms can keep pace.Another significant shift is occurring in the structure of law firm partnerships. The traditional single-tier partnership model, where all partners share ownership, is dwindling. Firms like Cravath and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison are reportedly adding or considering salaried partner tiers. However, some firms, like Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, are holding onto the single-tier partnership model for now.These changes mark a transformative period for New York's legal firms, reshaping how they operate, compete, and adapt in a rapidly evolving industry.New York legal scene faces tests after tumultuous 2023 | ReutersIn 2023, lawsuits against major chemical companies for polluting U.S. drinking water with PFAS, or "forever chemicals," resulted in over $11 billion in settlements. These chemicals, used in numerous consumer and commercial products, are known for their persistence in the environment and human body. With new federal regulations and growing awareness, 2024 is expected to see an increase in litigation and settlements related to PFAS contamination.Companies like 3M, Chemours, Corteva, and DuPont de Nemours have faced thousands of lawsuits, many consolidated in multidistrict litigation (MDL) in South Carolina. These include claims by water utilities for cleanup costs and personal injury claims linked to health issues caused by PFAS exposure. A significant settlement was reached in June, with 3M and water utilities agreeing to a $10.3 billion settlement, followed by another involving DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva for $1.19 billion.U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel, overseeing the MDL, has warned that these lawsuits could pose an existential threat to companies facing PFAS claims. The litigation's potential liabilities could lead defendants to settle to avoid large verdicts or seek bankruptcy protection, as seen in the case of Carrier Global subsidiary Kidde-Fenwal Inc in May.In 2024, legal experts anticipate more PFAS-related lawsuits, including those against consumer brands and more personal injury claims. At least one trial is scheduled in August in the MDL, focusing on firefighting foam manufacturers. Additionally, the process for selecting bellwether trials for personal injury cases is underway, with trials expected for various PFAS-related health issues.Outside of South Carolina, other trials are anticipated, including one involving North Carolina residents and another by Maine homeowners against a local paper mill. More settlements between chemical firms and state attorneys general are also expected, following the trend set by New Jersey and Ohio in 2023.The number of consumer class action lawsuits against companies producing PFAS-containing products like clothing, dental floss, and food wrappers is also on the rise. With the EPA moving forward with regulations that could set enforceable limits for PFAS in drinking water and potentially designate some as hazardous under the U.S. Superfund law, a surge in litigation is likely to continue into 2024 and beyond.‘Forever chemicals' were everywhere in 2023. Expect more litigation in 2024 | ReutersThe U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit against Grand Canyon University for engaging in deceptive advertising, illegal telemarketing practices, and misrepresenting itself as a nonprofit organization. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, targets Grand Canyon Education Inc (GCE), its CEO, and the university.The FTC's complaint alleges that the university misled prospective doctoral students regarding the cost and course requirements of its doctoral programs. It also accuses the university of deceptive and abusive telemarketing practices. The FTC contends that despite claims of being a nonprofit, Grand Canyon University operates for the profit of GCE and its stockholders, with GCE receiving 60% of the university's revenue.The Arizona-based university has denied these allegations, calling them unsubstantiated, and expressed confusion over the federal government's decision to target a Christian university positively addressing issues in higher education.This lawsuit follows a significant $37.7 million fine imposed on the university by the U.S. Education Department for misrepresenting the costs of its doctoral programs. According to the Education Department, fewer than 2% of the school's doctoral program graduates completed their program within the advertised cost, and almost 78% of these students took five or more continuation courses. The university has stated its intention to refute the allegations vigorously.US FTC sues Grand Canyon University for deceptive advertising, illegal telemarketing | Reuters Get full access to Minimum Competence - Daily Legal News Podcast at www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Stepping into the complex world of 'magic circle' law firms, Dan Binstock from Garrison, a DC-based attorney search firm, joins forces with Gary Miles, President and CEO of Miles Partner Placement. They're back on the podcast to shed light on the strategic growth challenges and opportunities for these elite law firms. They tackle the critical need for firms to differentiate themselves in a competitive market, cautioning against unnecessary changes. The conversation also covers the recent Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling merger, illustrating the struggles magic circle firms face when trying to expand beyond New York.   The episode takes an intriguing turn with a discussion on the closure of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan after nearly 150 years. Dan shares an insightful story that might have signaled early signs of trouble for the firm. Gary points out that ups and downs are part of a firm's life cycle, highlighting the importance of strong leadership and strategic planning.   Throughout the discussion, the respect these industry experts have for each other is clear. Tune in to gain valuable insights into what lies ahead for corporate law firms.   Quotes “I think some of the magic circle firms may not have anticipated some of the challenges in getting US partners to buy into the global platform. I think there are benefits to certain practice areas, but as a whole, it's not always the easiest sell, despite having a lot of positive elements.” (4:00 | Dan Binstock)  “There's one theme that usually runs through most firms: crashes. We're talking big and even small, and one thing that you can always look to is, ‘Does the firm have a succession plan for leadership? Does the firm have leadership, that is, the old terms of where they want to take the firm and grow it from the base of where it is, or is the firm leadership reacting to situations that the firm is constantly faced with in a competitive market?” (11:12 | Gary Miles) “I think the lesson learned is that firms shouldn't wait until things on a scale of one to 10 are at an eight and till they're being reactive, like Gary's saying, when things get to like a five or six in any situation is when the rumbling starts, you almost have to be a little bit more paranoid about the rumbling to be proactive.” (13:57 | Dan Binstock) “I think firms that want to be strategic and impactful in their growth really do need to figure out how they are distinguishing themselves from the herd in the marketplace. What is it about them, their infrastructure, their culture, their platform, how they internally do things that makes them different from firms XYZ?” (21:52 | Gary Miles) Audiogram “You never know what slogan or statement or principle that gets pulled out. If it's emphasized the right way, in the right story context, by a talented, experienced recruiter, you can never measure the impact of that.” (26:17 | Gary Miles) Links Connect with Dan Binstock: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/legalrecruiter/ Garrison: https://g-s.com Lateral Partners: https://lateralpartners.com/   Connect with Gary Miles: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-miles-aa7b28103/ Miles Partner Placement: https://milespartnerplacement.com/   Connect with Chris Batz: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbatz/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theliongroupkc  Instagram: @theliongroupllc   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm  

On the latest installment of Movers, Shakers, and Rainmakers, we chat with Robert Ingalls, Founder & CEO of LawPods, to explore his transition from legal practice to revolutionizing podcasting for lawyers. In a detailed discussion, Robert tackles the challenges law firms face in marketing, particularly in podcasting, and how to stand out in a crowded market. He offers strategic advice for lawyers or firms considering launching their own podcasts and how to effectively craft their brand. As for our Moves of the Week, they feature significant industry shifts: the departure of litigation and corporate leaders from FisherBroyles, hinting at a possible mass exodus from the first distributed firm in the Am Law 200, and the notable move of Josh Birenbaum from Allen & Overy's Los Angeles office to Kirkland & Ellis. Tune in, and remember to rate, review, subscribe, and share Movers, Shakers, and Rainmakers with your network

Wir freuen uns, dass Tamay Schimang zum zweiten Mal bei unserem Podcast „How to Legal Tech“ dabei ist. In einer neuen Folge mit unserem Host Luis Stade erzählt er uns von der neu gegründeten Plattform LOOP (Legal- Operations-Plattform). Tamay ist Rechtsanwalt und Director Legal Operations bei EY Law und berät zahlreiche Unternehmen bei Fragen zu Legal Process & Technology und Legal Operations. Mit Luis spricht Tamay über die Gründe, weshalb er gemeinsam mit vielen Kolleginnen und Kollegen eine neue Plattform etabliert hat. Nicht nur Unternehmen erkennen immer mehr, dass Legal Operations einen wichtigen Beitrag zur nachhaltigen Unternehmensentwicklung leisten. Auch das Interesse von Studenten, insbesondere Nachwuchsjuristen, an dem Thema Legal Operations nimmt zu, jedoch ist das universitäre Angebot aktuell noch sehr begrenzt. Das Ziel von LOOP ist es, das Thema rund um Legal Operations stärker in die Lehre zu integrieren und das universitäre Angebot in Kooperation mit Universitäten & Hochschulen auszubauen. In dieser Folge erfahren wir auch mehr über die anstehenden Events von LOOP. Eins davon ist das Legal Operations Speed Dating am 22.11.23 in Frankfurt am Main. Hier können sich interessierte Studierende u.a, mit Experten von Allen Overy, Ernst & Young Law, ING-DiBa AG, Telekom AG und PWC über deren Praxiserfahrung im Bereich Legal Operations austauschen. Weitere Informationen zu der Veranstaltung und eine E-Mail zur Anmeldung findest Du hier: https://www.linkedin.com/events/legaloperationsnetworking7126147362783125504/ & legal-ops-networking@fb3.fra-uas.de

In conversation with Adam Kingl, Author, Educator and Adviser. For the first time in history, there are five generations in the workplace. Millennials (Gen Y) are the ones stepping into leadership, managing individuals with different mindsets, sense of purpose and drivers for success. But challenges aside, how can you engage and motivate a diverse team? Thank you to Grace Mcleish, Senior Associate at Allen & Overy for hosting this episode.   Find out more about Adam's work at www.adamkingl.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.   Find more tools to help you shape your future, visit www.ipfa.org/future-leaders/  

On this day in history, July 20, 1990, Supreme Court Justice William Brennan retired. William Joseph Brennan Jr., an influential American jurist, served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1956 until 1990, making him the seventh-longest serving justice in history. To add some color to that run, he was appointed by President Eisenhower and his successor was appointed by George H. W. Bush. Brennan, originally from Newark, New Jersey, pursued economics at the University of Pennsylvania before studying at Harvard Law School, later practicing law privately in New Jersey and serving in the U.S. Army during WWII. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of New Jersey in 1951 and was placed on the Supreme Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 via a recess appointment.On the Supreme Court, Brennan was recognized for his progressive stance, opposing the death penalty, advocating for abortion and gay rights, and dissenting in over 1,400 cases where the court declined to review a death sentence. Brennan penned several landmark case opinions such as Baker v. Carr, Eisenstadt v. Baird, Craig v. Boren, and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, significantly influencing American jurisprudence. His ability to negotiate votes and shape varied opinions led to his recognition as one of the court's most influential members, with Justice Antonin Scalia naming him "probably the most influential Justice of the [20th] century." He retired in 1990 and was succeeded by David Souter. Justice Brennan passed away in 1997 Senator Tom Cotton, a prominent critic of progressive initiatives, has cautioned law firms and their clients regarding their use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. Following the US Supreme Court's decision to nullify affirmative action in higher education institutions, the Arkansas Republican issued warnings to 51 national and global law firms, stating that their continued endorsement of DEI programs could potentially breach federal law. Cotton, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, predicted that both Congress and private entities would use their respective powers to examine the surge in race-based employment practices.He also communicated to the firms, including Allen & Overy, Greenberg Traurig, and Hogan Lovells, that they should be prepared to answer to Congress if they persist with race-based programs. The notice extended beyond law firms, with Republican Attorneys General from several states also cautioning Fortune 100 CEOs against racially motivated hiring and recruitment practices. Cotton has previously issued similar warnings, including a communication to Target's CEO, advising against the company's DEI practices. Alongside other Republicans, Cotton had issued a warning in November to the same law firms concerning the risks associated with their Environmental, Social, and Governance practices.Big Law's Diversity Efforts May Be Illegal, GOP Senator WarnsDoorDash Inc., a major player in the gig economy, is testing a new hourly wage option for its drivers, which could potentially reshape their classification under federal labor laws. Currently, most gig economy companies, including DoorDash, categorize their workers as independent contractors, who do not receive the same protections as employees under federal employment laws. This new pay model might suggest DoorDash exercises a significant amount of control over its drivers, a key factor in determining whether a worker is an employee or a contractor.DoorDash maintains that the new payment structure gives drivers more choices and control over their pay, signifying an independent contractor status. This comes amidst ongoing debates about worker classification, with claims that companies exploit the independent contractor model to avoid the obligations associated with hiring employees.It's worth noting that both the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor (DOL) suggest hourly pay may indicate an employment relationship. This discussion arises as the Biden administration seeks to define the independent contractor status under federal wage laws. However, it's too early to predict how the DOL or courts will interpret DoorDash's move and what influence it might have on other gig economy companies.DoorDash Tests Gig-Economy Model With New Hourly Wage OptionGun rights advocates are challenging Massachusetts' firearm regulations, sparking scrutiny from the US Supreme Court. These challenges follow last year's Supreme Court decision, New York State Rifles & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which altered how firearms laws are evaluated and left many questions unresolved. Four active suits are currently testing the interpretation of this decision.In one case, Granata v. Healey, gun owners and manufacturers are challenging the state's restrictions on malfunctioning handguns. Another case seeks to have Massachusetts' ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines declared unconstitutional.At the state level, one lawsuit argues that the law allowing a licensing authority to revoke a person's gun license if it deems them unsuitable is too vague under Bruen. Another case aims to apply Bruen's test to the state's law prohibiting people from carrying switchblades.The Supreme Court has agreed to hear United States v. Rahimi, a case concerning the constitutionality of a federal law barring persons subject to a domestic-violence restraining order from possessing guns. This case could provide more guidance on the implementation of Bruen. However, attorneys note that it will take years for courts to refine Bruen's boundaries, and many details, especially concerning weapons that did not exist in the 18th century, remain unresolved.Gun Rights Battles Brew in Massachusetts in Supreme Court's WakeA U.S. judge has denied former President Donald Trump's attempt to move his criminal case from New York state court to federal court. The case is related to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump was indicted in April in Manhattan on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Daniels, facilitated by his then-lawyer Michael Cohen.Trump, currently a front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, argued that the case should be in federal court as it relates to his 2016 presidency and involves federal election law. However, Judge Alvin Hellerstein refuted these claims, stating that the case involves a personal matter unrelated to Trump's official acts as president.The judge also dismissed the argument that Trump has immunity and that the state charges were pre-empted because they were intended to defraud the voting public during a federal election. Trump's trial is set for March 2024 in the New York State Supreme Court, and it is yet to be confirmed whether he will appeal. Trump continues to argue that the case is politically motivated.Trump loses bid to move New York hush-money case to federal court | ReutersTesla has been instructed to turn over some of CEO Elon Musk's emails to JPMorgan Chase as part of an ongoing lawsuit. The case originates from a dispute over a bond contract that came about after Musk's 2018 tweet about potentially taking Tesla private. JPMorgan claims that Musk communicated about this plan through his SpaceX account. The bank has accused Tesla of breaching a 2014 contract related to stock warrants that it sold to JPMorgan, which it alleges increased in value due to Musk's tweet.The bank has sued Tesla for $162.2 million, arguing it had to reprice the warrants after Musk's tweet, and the subsequent increase in Tesla's stock price necessitated payments that Tesla has not made. Tesla counter-sued JPMorgan, accusing the bank of seeking a "windfall" when it repriced the warrants.Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2021, agreed as part of a 2018 deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to get preapproval for certain tweets from a Tesla lawyer. His attempt to terminate this agreement is currently being considered by a federal appeals court.Tesla to hand over Musk's emails to JPMorgan in lawsuit over 2018 tweet | Reuters Get full access to Minimum Competence - Daily Legal News Podcast at www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Zwei Gäste, ein Moderator und interessante Einblicke in die Welt des Steuerrechts: Das sind die Zutaten für diese Folge unseres Podcasts. Dr. Selina Reif und Dr. Magnus Müller sind beide bei Allen & Overy in München, sie als Associate, er als Partner. Sie erzählen Moritz Mümmler von ihrem Weg in die Kanzlei und der Arbeit in ihrem Fachgebiet. Steuerrecht ist bei Allen & Overy keineswegs ein Nischenthema, sondern ein interdisziplinär aufgestellter Beratungsschwerpunkt. Der Bereich ist breitgefächert und verändert sich stetig: „Wer hier als Jurist*in tätig ist, muss am Ball bleiben“, sagt Selina. Dafür gebe es immer wieder neue, frische Themen und viele Möglichkeiten, sich im Sinne der Mandanten einzubringen. Dazu gehören auch spektakuläre Fälle, die durch die Medien gehen. „Wir sind nah am Geschehen und oft Vermittler zwischen Steuerpflichtigen und Finanzverwaltungen“, ergänzt Magnus. Die beiden fühlen sich hörbar gut aufgehoben in ihrer Rolle und bei ihrem Arbeitgeber. Allen & Overy bietet Nachwuchstalenten verschiedene Möglichkeiten, die Kanzlei kennenzulernen beziehungsweise erste berufliche Schritte zu gehen. Darum geht es hier genauso wie um (sinnvolle) Ausbildung, zumal Magnus auch Lehrbeauftragter an zwei Hochschulen ist. Steuerrecht gilt als krisensichere Disziplin, doch es zeichnen sich Trends und Veränderungen ab. Welche? In dieser Folge findet Ihr Antworten. Viel Spaß! Die neue Episode als Video auf YouTube. Bitte hier klicken. Du bist noch nicht bei clavisto? Als exzellente Nachwuchsjurist*in bist Du bei uns genau richtig! Unser Talentprogramm bietet Dir vielfältige Karrierechancen, kostenlose Förderleistungen und begleitet Dich auf Deinem Weg in eine Top-Kanzlei. www.clavisto.de   RECHT persönlich auf Apple Podcasts bewerten clavisto auf Instagram clavisto auf Facebook clavisto auf LinkedIn

In the latest episode of Movers, Shakers & Rainmakers, our hosts have an insightful conversation with Ed Wisneski, Hiring Partner at Rimon Law. Delving deep into the unique aspects of Rimon's platform, Ed identifies the characteristics that set his law firm apart from more conventional ones, explains what types of partners and practices thrive at Rimon, and outlines the firm's future ambitions. In the popular "Moves of the Week" segment, our hosts break down the merger of Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling, plus Mayer Brown's strategic hiring of a senior national security official from the DOJ, Adam Hickey. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. See you in two weeks!

We have a potentially perspective-shifting “this day in legal history” for today. On this day, May 22, in 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the General Amnesty Act. Under the provisions of the act, all but around 500 Southern male voters had their voting rights reinstated after losing them for, you know, starting the Civil War. For a reference point, total numbers for the army of the Confederacy vary, but somewhere between 750,000 and 1.2 million individuals fought for the south in the war. So all but about 0.07% of the members of the Confederate Army had their right to vote reinstated within 7 years of the war ending and Lincoln's assassination. For perspective, at present day, 4.6 million Americans are denied the right to vote owing to a felony conviction – constituting about 2% of the total voting age population. In Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee – more than 8 percent of the adult population, or one out of every 13 folks of voting age, is disenfranchised.Law firms Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling have agreed to merge, pending partner approval, creating a significant new player in the legal industry. The combined entity, to be named Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, will comprise over 3,900 lawyers worldwide. The merger follows the breakdown of Shearman's talks with Hogan Lovells earlier this year and provides Allen & Overy with a larger presence in the US. The firms aim to offer integrated and globally consistent services in response to client demands. The leadership structure of the combined firm has not yet been determined, with officials from both firms expected to share leadership responsibilities.London's Allen & Overy to Merge With Shearman & Sterling (1)Law firms Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling plan merger | ReutersMeta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook, has been slapped with a record-breaking €1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) fine by the European Union (EU) for privacy violations. The EU regulators found that Meta failed to adequately protect users' personal information from US governmental access and continued to transfer data to the US, posing risks to fundamental rights and freedoms. In addition to the fine, Meta has been given a deadline of five months to halt any future transfer of personal data to the US and six months to cease the unlawful processing and storage of EU data in the US. Meta's stock price saw a 1% decline following the announcement.While the ban on data transfers was anticipated, it is now less likely to have a significant impact due to the transition period and the potential for a new EU-US data flows agreement in the near future. This ongoing saga originated when the EU's top court invalidated an EU-US pact governing transatlantic data flows due to concerns about the safety of citizens' data on US servers. Despite an alternative tool based on contractual clauses not being struck down by the court, doubts about US data protection prompted the Irish authority to issue a preliminary order prohibiting Facebook from using this method as well.Meta plans to appeal the Irish decision, claiming it is flawed and unjustified. The company intends to seek a suspension of the banning orders, emphasizing the potential harm to the millions of people who use Facebook daily. Meta's president of global affairs and chief legal officer expressed concerns that these data-transfer restrictions could fragment the internet, impede the global economy, and limit access to shared services.Meta Fined Record $1.3 Billion in EU Over US Data Transfers - BloombergThe State Bar of California's board of trustees has voted in favor of a new ethics rule that would require lawyers to report professional misconduct by their peers. The rule, referred to as the "snitch rule," mandates the reporting of criminal acts, fraud, misappropriation of funds, and other conduct that reflects negatively on a lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness. The rule change is aimed at improving lawyer oversight in the wake of the Tom Girardi scandal, where the founder of Girardi Keese faced numerous ethics complaints and was later charged with taking millions of dollars from clients. California, with its large number of lawyers, and relatively high number of large law firms, has received both support and opposition for the rule, as one might expect. Non-attorneys generally favor the change, viewing it as a deterrent to misconduct, while some lawyers argue that it would overwhelm the disciplinary system and hinder lawyer-client relationships. The proposed rule has been sent to the California Supreme Court for final approval, and potential discipline for non-compliance ranges from private reproval to a three-year suspension.Under ethics pressure, California state bar advances lawyer 'snitch' rule | ReutersThe US Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the IRS in a case concerning the agency's authority to request bank records without notice. The court stated that the IRS can exercise its power to aid tax collection even if the delinquent taxpayer does not have a legal interest in the targeted records. The case, Polselli v. IRS, originated from the IRS's attempts to collect a tax assessment against Remo Polselli, who was suspected of using entities to shield assets. The IRS issued summonses to Polselli's law firm and later to banks for records related to the firm and Polselli's wife. The ruling has implications for bank account holder protections, as account holders can only challenge the summons's validity if they had the right to notice. The ruling distinguishes between post-assessment collection cases, where notice is not required, and cases prior to tax assessment, where notice is generally given.In the court's opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged concerns about the scope of the IRS's authority but did not define the precise limits of the phrase "in aid of the collection." The ruling leaves open the question of whether there are further limits on the IRS's exception to notice. In a concurring opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson outlined potential situations where the IRS might be required to directly notify account holders. However, it remains uncertain how many justices would agree with those potential limits. The IRS is under pressure to close the tax collection gap, but critics worry that the ruling erodes the notice system and places the responsibility on the IRS to determine when notice is required. The government suggested a possible test for allowing no-notice summonses: that the demands be "reasonably calculated to assisting in collection." Supreme Court Leaves Open Question on Limit of IRS Summons Power Get full access to Minimum Competence - Daily Legal News Podcast at www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

In this episode, Yvonne and I talk about the latest fine slapped on Meta Platforms and the historic merger between Allen & Overy…

This week on the Lisa Burke Show, Professor Valérie Schafer, Nathan Summers and Patrick Mischo discuss ChatGPT and AI more generally as it becomes part of our life. OpenAI released an early demo of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, and since then this chatbot has infiltrated conversation across many domains. Top of the list, perhaps, was education, and so I turned to the University of Luxembourg to tell me who is working on how to figure out how to deal with Chat GPT at this level. Professor Valérie Schafer is a Professor in Contemporary History at the C²DH (Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History) at the university. Her main research interests are the history of the Internet and the Web, digital cultures and infrastructures, and born-digital heritage (especially Web archives). My other guests are Nathan Summers and Patrick Mischo. Nathan is an AI Research Analyst working for the Luxembourg Tech School. His work primarily focuses on ethical dilemmas associated with real-world application of AI systems. Patrick Mischo is the Office Senior Partner of Allen & Overy in Luxembourg. He talks about 'Harvey' - Open AI's GPT for for lawyers. As we enter this new world, with Open AI such as Chat GPT, we need to become even more aware of the way in which it works, how we can use it for good, and what the pitfalls could be. Naturally, with education (and other work), universities need to think about plagiarism and fraud. How can one use Chat GPT in a creative and pedagogical way? How should one word and reword questions to get the best out of Chat GPT? Valérie explains that they use Chat GPT as a base, as a tool, with students and improve on one's answer from there. However, there is great risk of AI hallucinations, as Nathan Summers explains. AI systems can very confidently provide us with untrue information. There is also inherent bias. Despite Chat GPT being based on enormous amounts (but only with data up to 2021), this data is likely skewed as the internet has been used and populated with information predominantly in certain countries. It will become very important to constantly cross-reference any information given by Chat GPT. As it happens, the mechanism of AI systems is a black box - we don't really know the internal workings of these neural networks, especially in proprietary systems. This raises a different issue, once more, the power of big tech companies in our lives? Valérie reminds us that if the information is free, we are the product, and with that we need to be increasingly careful of what information we input. This is especially true, and precarious for young people. When it comes to delegating small tasks or generative roles, AI will definitely change the job market. Patrick Mischo talks about the use of Harvey within their work as a law firm. However, AI systems cannot be held legally liable for damages. As with education, in the legal field it is necessary to develop a critical eye to spot any potential inaccuracies. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how Chat GPT is changing your work or life. Are you worried about your job? Do you think it's a wonderful addition to the tech world we co-habit?

In this episode, we are delighted to welcome Jeanne Soh - Head of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, Structured Finance Department Asia Pacific, SMBC, Jason Humphreys - Partner Singapore, Allen Overy and Rowan von Spreckelsen - Principal at Research Analytics, Aurora in a discussion with our Managing Director for Australia Hugo Batten on some of the major challenges and opportunities in Asia Pacific Region for energy project finance. This episode is the third in a series on global project finance, organised in partnership with SMBC Group. With a number of 4 episodes covering Europe, Australia, Asia and the US, this series is hosted by Aurora, with guests from SMBC Group, various law firms and Aurora. The APAC region has varying levels of development when it comes to financing alternative energy solutions, with different markets exhibiting different levels of activity in energy and project finance based on technologies and geographies. Taiwan has shown increased interest in offshore wind, and its regulatory environment is favourable. Corporate PPAs are expected to be crucial in Taiwan, which has a clear regulatory framework for offshore wind. However, implementation may take some time. India has high investment and growth in alternative energy solutions, driven by demand from C&I customers, with a focus on hybrid-type solutions. Vietnam has many investors interested in its energy solutions, and has already been a leader in the region due to its solar capacity additions as part of its coal phase-out. Indonesia has room to grow in terms of renewable energy deployment, but has faced challenges with the tendering process and achieving grid-connected PPAs. There is also little visibility on how the carbon trading mechanism for coal plants will be implemented. Japan's corporate PPA market has seen a lot of interest, with batteries also becoming a major focus. However, there are concerns regarding the deliverability of some of the government targets, particularly given policy uncertainty and commodity price fluctuations.

As part of our Women in Trade Campaign, Trade Finance Global's Natasha Roston spoke with Catherine Lang-Anderson, partner at Allen & Overy, to hear about her personal experiences and lessons learned as a female leader in the legal industry.

Brak reakcji na kryzys może być bardzo kosztowny. Brak działań naprawczych zazwyczaj powoduje niewypłacalność, niewypłacalność powoduje upadłość, a upadłość powoduje to, że firma znika z rynku. Brak restrukturyzacji to brak odwagi i brak kompetencji osób zarządzających żeby wprowadzać działania, które mają charakter naprawczy – mówił w programie „Rzecz o prawie” Bartosz Merczyński, partner w Allen & Overy, A. Pędzich sp. k.Pytany, czy dużo firm przeżywa kłopoty finansowe wyjaśnił: - Fala jest przed nami i wszyscy się na nią przygotowują. To fala odroczona w czasie bo wszyscy wieszczyli wielką falę restrukturyzacji pocovidowych. Okazało się jednak, że środki, które rządy wpompowały do gospodarek wydłużyły pas startowy do restrukturyzacji, ale widzimy z zapytań klientów, że i branża finansowa i spółki przygotowują się na restrukturyzacje. Myślę, że to kwestia najbliższych sześciu do dziewięciu miesięcy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

OpenAI just rollicked the AI world yet again yesterday — while releasing the long awaited ChatGPT API, they also priced it at $2 per million tokens generated, which is 90% cheaper than the text-davinci-003 pricing of the “GPT3.5” family. Their blogpost on how they did it is vague: Through a series of system-wide optimizations, we've achieved 90% cost reduction for ChatGPT since December; we're now passing through those savings to API users.We were fortunate enough to record Episode 2 of our podcast with someone who routinely creates 90%+ improvements for their customers, and in fact have started productizing their own infra skills with Codeium, the rapidly growing free-forever Copilot alternative (see What Building “Copilot for X” Really Takes). Varun Mohan is CEO of Exafunction/Codeium, and he indulged us in diving deep into AI infrastructure, compute-optimal training vs inference tradeoffs, and why he loves suffering.Recorded in-person at the beautiful StudioPod studios in San Francisco.Full transcript is below the fold. Timestamps* 00:00: Intro to Varun and Exafunction* 03:06: GPU Efficiency, Model Flop Utilization, Dynamic Multiplexing* 05:30: Should companies own their ML infrastructure?* 07:00: The two kinds of LLM Applications* 08:30: Codeium* 14:50: “Our growth is 4-5% day over day”* 16:30: Latency, Quality, and Correctability* 20:30: Acceleration mode vs Exploration mode* 22:00: Copilot for X - Harvey AI's deal with Allen & Overy* 25:00: Scaling Laws (Chinchilla)* 28:45: “The compute-optimal model might not be easy to serve”* 30:00: Smaller models* 32:30: Deepmind Retro can retrieve external infromation* 34:30: Implications for embedding databases* 37:10: LLMOps - Eval, Data Cleaning* 39:45: Testing/User feedback* 41:00: “Users Is All You Need”* 42:45: General Intelligence + Domain Specific Dataset* 43:15: The God Nvidia computer* 46:00: Lightning roundShow notes* Varun Mohan Linkedin* Exafunction* Blogpost: Are GPUs Worth it for ML* Codeium* Copilot statistics* Eleuther's The Pile and The Stack* What Building “Copilot for X” Really Takes* Copilot for X* Harvey, Copilot for Law - deal with Allen & Overy* Scaling Laws* Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models - arXiv (Chinchilla paper)* chinchilla's wild implications (LessWrong)* UL2 20B: An Open Source Unified Language Learner (20B)* Paper - Deepmind Retro* “Does it make your beer taste better”* HumanEval benchmark/dataset* Reverse Engineering Copilot internals* Quora Poe* Prasanna Sankar notes on FLOPs and Bandwidth* NVIDIA H100 specs - 3TB/s GPU memory, 900GB/s NVLink Interconnect* Optimizer state is 14x size of model - 175B params => 2.5TB to store state → needs at least 30 H100 machines with 80GB each* Connor Leahy on The Gradient PodcastLightning Rounds* Favorite AI Product: Midjourney* Favorite AI Community: Eleuther and GPT-J* One year prediction: Better models, more creative usecases* Request for Startup: Superathlete Fitness Assistant* Takeaway: Continue to tinker!Transcript[00:00:00] Alessio Fanelli: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO in residence at Decibel Partners. I'm joined by my cohost, swyx, writer, editor of L Space Diaries.[00:00:20] swyx: Hey, and today we have Varun Mohan from Codeium / Exafunction on. I should introduce you a little bit because I like to get the LinkedIn background out of the way.[00:00:30] So you did CS at MIT and then you spent a few years at Nuro where you were ultimately tech lead manager for autonomy. And that's an interesting dive. Self-driving cars in AI and then you went straight into Exafunction with a few of your coworkers and that's where I met some of them and started knowing about Exafunction.[00:00:51] And then from out of nowhere you cloned GitHub Copilot. That's a lot of progress in a very short amount of time. So anyway, welcome .[00:00:59] Varun Mohan: That's high praise.[00:01:00] swyx: What's one thing about you that doesn't appear on LinkedIn that is a big part of what people should know?[00:01:05] Varun Mohan: I actually really like endurance sports actually.[00:01:09] Like I, I've done multiple triathlons. I've actually biked from San Francisco to LA. I like things that are like suffering. I like to suffer while I, while I do sports. Yeah.[00:01:19] swyx: Do you think a lot about like code and tech while you're doing those endurance sports or are you just,[00:01:24] Varun Mohan: your mind is just focused?[00:01:26] I think it's maybe a little bit of both. One of the nice things about, I guess, endurance athletics, It's one of the few things you can do where you're not thinking about, you can't really think about much beyond suffering. Like you're climbing up a hill on a bike and you see like, uh, you see how many more feet you need to climb, and at that point you're just struggling.[00:01:45] That's your only job. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. The only thing you can think of is, uh, pedaling one more pedal. So it's actually like a nice, a nice way to not think about work. Yeah,[00:01:53] Alessio Fanelli: yeah, yeah. Maybe for the audience, you wanna tell a bit about exa function, how that came to be and how coding came out[00:01:59] Varun Mohan: of that. So a little bit about exo function.[00:02:02] Before working at exa function, I worked at Neuro as Sean was just saying, and at neuro, I sort of managed large scale offline deep learning infrastructure. Realized that deep learning infrastructure is really hard to build and really hard to maintain for even the most sophisticated companies, and started exa function to basically solve that gap, to make it so that it was much easier for companies.[00:02:24] To serve deep learning workloads at scale. One of the key issues that we noticed is GPUs are extremely hard to manage fundamentally because they work differently than CPUs. And once a company has heterogeneous hardware requirements, it's hard to make sure that you get the most outta the hardware. It's hard to make sure you can get, get great GPU utilization and exa function was specifically built to make it so that you could get the most outta the hardware.[00:02:50] Make sure. Your GP was effectively virtualized and decoupled from your workload to make it so that you could be confident that you were running at whatever scale you wanted without burning the bank.[00:03:00] swyx: Yeah. You gave me this metric about inefficiency,[00:03:03] Varun Mohan: right? Oh, okay. Like flop efficiency. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, I think it comes down to, for most people, one of the things about CPUs that's really nice is with containers, right?[00:03:13] You can end up having a single. You can place many containers on them and all the containers will slowly start eating the compute. It's not really the same with GPUs. Like let's say you have a single. For the most part, only have one container using that gpu. And because of that, people heavily underestimate what a single container can sort of do.[00:03:33] And the GPU is left like heavily idle. And I guess the common term now with a lot of LM workloads is like the flop efficiency of these workloads. M F U, yeah. Yeah. Model flop utilization. The model flop utilization, which is basically like what fraction of the flops or compute on the hardware is actually getting used.[00:03:49] And sort of what we did at exa function. Not only make it so that the model was always running, we also built compiler technology to make it so that the model was also running more efficiently. And some of these things are with tricks like operator fusion, like basically you could imagine fusing two operations together such that the time it takes to compute.[00:04:07] the fused operation is lower than the time it takes for each individual operation. Oh my God. Yeah. .[00:04:13] Alessio Fanelli: Yeah. And you have this technique called dynamic multiplexing, which is basically, instead of having a one-to-one relationship, you have one GP for multiple clients. And I saw one of your customers, they went from three clients to just one single GPU and the cost by 97%.[00:04:29] What were some of those learning, seeing hardware usage and efficiencies and how that then played into what, what[00:04:34] Varun Mohan: you're building? Yeah, I think it basically showed that there was probably a gap with even very sophisticated teams. Making good use of the hardware is just not an easy problem. I think that was the main I, it's not that these teams were like not good at what they were doing, it's just that they were trying to solve a completely separate problem.[00:04:50] They had a model that was trained in-house and their goal was to just run it and it, that should be an easy. Easy thing to do, but surprisingly still, it's not that easy. And that problem compounds in complexity with the fact that there are more accelerators now in the cloud. There's like TPUs, inferential and there's a lot of decisions, uh, that users need to make even in terms of GPU types.[00:05:10] And I guess sort of what we had was we had internal expertise on what the right way to run the workload was, and we were basically able to build infrastructure and make it so that companies could do that without thinking. So most[00:05:21] Alessio Fanelli: teams. Under utilizing their hardware, how should they think about what to own?[00:05:26] You know, like should they own the appearance architecture? Like should they use Xlo to get it to production? How do you think[00:05:32] Varun Mohan: about it? So I think one thing that has proven to be true over the last year and a half is companies, for the most part, should not be trying to figure out what the optimal ML architecture is or training architecture is.[00:05:45] Especially with a lot of these large language models. We have generic models and transformer architecture that are solving a lot of distinct problems. I'll caveat that with most companies. Some of our customers, which are autonomous vehicle companies, have extremely strict requirements like they need to be able to run a model at very low latency, extremely high precision recall.[00:06:05] You know, GBT three is great, but the Precision Recall, you wouldn't trust someone's life with that, right? So because of that, they need to innovate new kinds of model architectures. For a vast majority of enterprises, they should probably be using something off the shelf, fine tuning Bert models. If it's vision, they should be fine tuning, resonant or using something like clip like the less work they can do, the better.[00:06:25] And I guess that was a key turning point for us, which is like we start to build more and more infrastructure for the architectures that. The most popular and the most popular architecture was the transformer architecture. We had a lot of L L M companies explicitly reach out to us and ask us, wow, our GT three bill is high.[00:06:44] Is there a way to serve G P T three or some open source model much more cheaply? And that's sort of what we viewed as why we were maybe prepared for when we internally needed to deploy transform models our.[00:06:58] Alessio Fanelli: And so the next step was, Hey, we have this amazing infrastructure. We can build kind of consumer facing products, so to speak, at with much better unit economics, much better performance.[00:07:08] And that's how code kind[00:07:10] Varun Mohan: of came to be. Yeah. I think maybe the, the play is not maybe for us to be just, we make a lot of consumer products. We want to make products with like clear ROI in the long term in the enterprise. Like we view code as maybe one of those things. Uh, and maybe we can, we can talk about code maybe after this.[00:07:27] We. Products like co-pilot as being extremely valuable and something that is generating a lot of value to professionals. We saw that there was a gap there where a lot of people probably weren't developing high intensive L L M applications because of cost, because of the inability to train models the way they want to.[00:07:44] And we thought we could do that with our own infrastructure really quickly.[00:07:48] swyx: I wanna highlight when you say high intensive, you mean basically generate models every key, uh, generate inferences on every keystroke? That's[00:07:55] Varun Mohan: right. Yeah. So I would say like, there's probably two kinds of L l M applications here.[00:07:59] There's an L L M application where, you know, it rips through a bunch of data and maybe you wait a couple minutes and then you see something, and then there's an application where the quality is not exactly what you want, but it's able to generate enough, sorry, low enough latency. It's still providing a ton of value.[00:08:16] And I will say there's like a gap there where the number of products that have hit that co-pilot spot is actually not that high. Mm. A lot of them are, are kind of like weight and, you know, just generate a lot of stuff and see what happens because one is clearly more compute intensive than the other Basically.[00:08:31] swyx: Well co uh, I don't know if we told the whole story yet, you were going to[00:08:35] Varun Mohan: dive into it. . Yeah, so I guess, I guess the story was I guess four or five months ago we sort of decided internally as a team we were like very early adopters of co-pilot. I'm not gonna sit here and say co-pilot, it's not a great tool.[00:08:45] We love co-pilot. It's like a fantastic tool. We all got on the beta. The moment it came out we're like a fairly small T, but we, like we all got in, we were showing each other completions. We end up writing like a lot of cuda and c plus plus inside the company. And I think there was probably a thought process within us that was like, Hey, the code we write is like very high aq.[00:09:04] You know? So like there's no way it can help. And one of the things in c plus plus that's like the most annoying is writing templates. Writing template programming is maybe one of those things. No one, maybe there's like some people in the C plus O standards community that can do it without looking at the, looking at anything online.[00:09:19] But we struggle. We struggle writing bariatric templates and COPA just like ripped through. Like we had a 500 line file and it was just like writing templates like, and we didn't really even test it while we were running it. We then just compiled it and it just, We're like, wow. Like this is actually something that's not just like it's completing four loops, it's completing code for us.[00:09:38] That is like hard in our brains to reach, but fundamentally and logically is not that complicated. The only reason why it's complicated is there's just a lot of rules, right. And from then we were just like, wow, this is, that was maybe the first l l m application for us internally, because we're not like marketers that would use, uh, Jasper, where we were like, wow, this is like extremely valuable.[00:09:58] This is not a toy anymore. So we wanted to take our technology to build maybe apps where these apps were not gonna be toys, right? They were not gonna be like a demo where you post it on Twitter and then you know there's hype and then maybe like a month later, no one's using.[00:10:11] swyx: There's a report this morning, um, from co-pilot where they, they were estimating the key tabs on amount of code generated by a co-pilot that is then left in code repos and checked in, and it's something like 60 to 70%[00:10:24] Varun Mohan: That's, that's nuts, but I totally believe it given, given the stats we have too. There's this flips in your head once you start using products like this, where in the beginning there's like, there's like skepticism, like how, how valuable can it be? And suddenly now like user behavior fundamentally changes so that now when I need to write a function, I'm like documenting my code more because I think it's prompting the model better, right?[00:10:43] So there's like this crazy thing where it's a self-fulfilling prophecy where when you get more value from it, more of your code is generated. From co-pilot[00:10:50] swyx: just to walk through the creation process, I actually assumed that you would have grabbed your data from the pile, which is the Luther ai, uh, open source, uh, code information.[00:11:00] But apparently you scraped your own[00:11:01] Varun Mohan: stuff. Yeah. We ended up basically using a lot of open, I guess, permissively licensed code, uh, in the public internet, mainly because I think also the pile is, is fairly a small subset. Uh, I think maybe after we started there was the, that was also came to be, but for us, we had a model for ourselves even before that, uh, was the point.[00:11:21] Ah, okay. So the timing was just a little bit off. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But it's awesome work. It's, it seems like there's a good amount of work that's getting done Decentrally. Yeah. Which is a little bit surprising to me because I'm like more bullish on everyone needs to get together in a room and make stuff happen.[00:11:35] Like we're all in person in Mountain View. But yeah, no, it's pretty impressive. Yeah. Luther in general, like everything they've done, I'm pretty impressed with it. Yeah, and we're[00:11:42] swyx: gonna talk about that. Cause I, I didn't know you were that involved in the community[00:11:45] Varun Mohan: that early on I wasn't involved. It was more of like a, I was watching and maybe commenting from time to time.[00:11:50] So they're a very special community for sure. Yeah,[00:11:52] swyx: yeah, yeah. That's true. That's true. My impression is a bunch of you are geniuses. You sit down together in a room and you. , get all your data, you train your model, like everything's very smooth sailing. Um, what's wrong with that[00:12:02] Varun Mohan: image? Yeah, so probably a lot of it just in that a lot of our serving infrastructure was already in place, Uhhuh before then.[00:12:09] So like, hey, we were able to knock off one of these boxes that I think a lot of other people maybe struggle with. The open source serving offerings are just, I will say, not great in that. That they aren't customized to transformers and these kind of workloads where I have high latency and I wanna like batch requests, and I wanna batch requests while keeping latency low.[00:12:29] Mm-hmm. , right? One of the weird things about generation models is they're like auto regressive, at least for the time being. They're auto aggressive. So the latency for a generation is a function of the amount of tokens that you actually end up generating. Like that's like the math. And you could imagine while you're generating the tokens though, unless you batch a.[00:12:46] It's gonna end up being the case that you're not gonna get great flop utilization on the hardware. So there's like a bunch of trade offs here where if you end up using something completely off the shelf, like one of these serving thing, uh, serving frameworks, you're gonna end up leaving a lot of performance on the table.[00:13:00] But for us, we were already kind of prepared. To sort of do that because of our infrastructure that we had already built up. And probably the other thing to sort of note is early on we were able to leverage open source models, sort of bootstrap it internally within our company, but then to ship, we finally had some requirements like, Hey, we want this model to have fill in the middle capabilities and a bunch of other things.[00:13:20] And we were able to ship a model ourselves. So we were able to time it so that over the course of multiple months, different pieces were like working out properly for us. So it wasn't. . You know, we started out and we were just planning the launch materials. The moment we started there was like maybe some stuff that was already there, some stuff that we had already figured out how to train models at scale internally.[00:13:38] So we were able to just leverage that muscle very quickly. I think the one[00:13:41] swyx: thing that you had figured out from the beginning was that it was gonna be free forever. Yeah. Yeah, co-pilot costs $10[00:13:47] Varun Mohan: a month. Co-pilot costs $10 a month. I would argue significantly more value than $10 a month. The important thing for us though, was we are gonna continue to build more great products on top of code completion.[00:13:58] We think code completion is maybe day one of what the future looks like. And for that, clearly we can't be a product that's like we're $10 a month and we're adding more products. We want a user base that loves using us. And we'll continue to stay with us as we continue to layer on more products. And I'm sure we're gonna get more users from the other products that we have, but we needed some sort of a differentiator.[00:14:17] And along the way we realized, hey, we're pretty efficient at running these workloads. We could probably do this. Oh, so it wasn't,[00:14:23] swyx: it was a plan to be free from the start. You just[00:14:25] Varun Mohan: realized we, yeah. We realized we could probably, if we cut and optimized heavily, we could probably do this properly. Part of the reasoning here was we were confident we could probably build a pro tier and go to the enter.[00:14:35] But for now, originally when we, when we started, we weren't like, we're just gonna go and give every, all pieces of software away for free. That wasn't like sort of the goal there. And[00:14:43] swyx: since you mentioned, uh, adoption and, you know, traction and all that, uh, what can you disclose about user growth? Yeah, user adoption.[00:14:50] Varun Mohan: Yeah. So right now we have. We probably have over 10,000 users and thousands of daily actives, and people come back day over day. Our growth is like around, you know, four to 5% day over day right now. So all of our growth right now is sort of like word of mouth, and that's fundamentally because like the product is actually one of those products where.[00:15:08] Even use COT and use us, it's, it's hard to tell the difference actually. And a lot of our users have actually churned off of cot isn't Yeah. I,[00:15:14] swyx: I swept Yeah. Yeah. To support you guys, but also also to try[00:15:17] Varun Mohan: it out. Yeah, exactly. So the, the crazy thing is it wasn't like, Hey, we're gonna figure out a marketing motion of like, Going to the people that have never heard of co-pilot and we're gonna like get a bunch of users.[00:15:27] We wanted to just get users so that in our own right we're like a really great product. Uh, and sort of we've spent a lot of engineering time and obviously we co-wrote a blog post with you, Sean, on this in terms of like, there's a lot of engineering work, even beyond the latency, making sure that you can get your cost down to make a product like this actually work.[00:15:44] swyx: Yeah. That's a long tail of, of stuff that you referenced,[00:15:47] Varun Mohan: right? Yes. Yeah, exactly.[00:15:48] swyx: And you, you said something to the order of, um, and this maybe gets into co-pilot for X uh, which is something that everybody is keen about cuz they, they see the success of co-pilot. They're like, okay, well first of all, developer tools, there's more to do here.[00:16:00] And second of all, let's say the co-pilot idea and apply for other disciplines. I don't know if you wanna Yeah.[00:16:06] Varun Mohan: There's[00:16:06] Alessio Fanelli: gonna some. Key points that, that you touched on. Um, how to estimate, inference a scale, you know, and the latency versus quality trade-offs. Building on first party. So this is free forever because you run your own models, right?[00:16:19] That's right. If you were building on open ai, you wouldn't be able to offer it for free real-time. You know, when I first use coding, It was literally the same speed as Copi is a little bit[00:16:29] swyx: faster. I don't know how to quantify it,[00:16:31] Varun Mohan: but we are faster. But it's one of those things that we're not gonna like market as that's the reason because it's not in and of itself a right for you to like, I'm just gonna be open with you.[00:16:39] It's not a reason for you to like suddenly turn off a copilot where if our answers were trash, uh, but we were faster. You know what I mean? But your focus[00:16:46] Alessio Fanelli: was there. We used the alpha, I think prem on our discord came to us and say, you guys should try this out. So it was really fast. Even then, prompt optimization is another big thing, and model outputs and UX kind of how you bring them together.[00:17:00] Which ones of these things are maybe like the one or two that new founders should really think about first?[00:17:07] Varun Mohan: Yeah, I think, I think my feeling on this is unless you are ex, you probably should always bootstrap on top of an existing a. Because like even if you were to, the only reason why we didn't is because we knew that this product was actually buildable.[00:17:22] Probably if we worked hard enough to train a model, we would actually be able to build a great product already. But if you're actually going out and trying to build something from scratch, unless you genuinely believe, I need to fine tune on top of, you know, terabytes of data terabyte is a very large amount of data, but like tens of gigabytes of data.[00:17:37] Probably go out and build on top of an API and spend most of your time to make it so that you can hit that quality latency trade off properly. And if I were to go out and think about like the three categories of like an LM product, it's probably like latency, quality, and correct ability. The reality is, you know, if I were to take a product like co-pilot or Coum, the latency is very low.[00:17:58] The quality I think, is good enough for the task, but the correct ability is, is very easy. Credibility. What, what is correct ability? Correct ability means, let's say the quality is not there. Like you consider the the case where, The answer is wrong. How easy is it for your user to actually go and leverage parts of the generation?[00:18:16] Maybe a, a concrete example. There's a lot of things people are excited about right now where I write a comment and it generates a PR for me, and that's like, that's like really awesome in theory. I think that's like a really cool thing and I'm sure at some point we will be able to get there. That will probably require an entirely new model for what it's worth that's trained on diffs and commits and all these other things that looks at like improvements and code and stuff.[00:18:37] It's probably not gonna be just trained on generic code. But the problem with those, those sort of, I would say, applications are that, let's suppose something does change many files, makes large amounts of changes. First of all, it's guaranteed not gonna be. Because even the idea of like reviewing the change takes a long time.[00:18:54] So if the quality and the correct ability is just not there, let's say you had 10 file, a 10 file change and you modified like, you know, file two and four, and those two modifications were consistent, but the other eight files were not consistent. Then suddenly the correct ability is like really hard.[00:19:10] It's hard to correct the output of the model. And so the user interface is 100% really important. But maybe until you get the latency down or the correct ability, like correct ability, like a lot better, it's probably not gonna be shippable. And I think that's what you gotta spend your time focusing on.[00:19:26] Can you deliver a product that is actually something users want to use? And I think this is why I was talking about like demo. It's like very easy to hand to handpick something that like works, that works for a demo, exceedingly hard for something that has large scope, like a PR to work consistently. It will take a lot of engineering effort to make it work on small enough chunks so that a user is like, wow, this is value generative to me.[00:19:49] Because eroding user trust or consumer trust is very easy. Like that is, it is is much, much, it's very easy to erode user trust versus enterprise. So just be mindful of that, and I think that's probably like the mantra that most of these companies need to operate under. Have you done any[00:20:05] Alessio Fanelli: analysis on. What the ratio between code generated and latency is.[00:20:11] So you can generate one line, but you could also generate the whole block. You can generate Yeah. A whole class and Yeah. You know, the more you generate the, the more time it takes. Like what's the sweet spot that, that you[00:20:21] Varun Mohan: found? Yeah, so I think there was a great study and, and I'm not sure if it's possible to link it, but there was a great study about co-pilot actually that came out.[00:20:28] Basically what they said was there were two ways that developers usually develop with a code assistant technology. They're either in what's called like acceleration mode or exploration mode. And exploration mode is basically you're in the case where you don't even know what the solution space for the function is.[00:20:43] and you just wanna generate a lot of code because you don't even know what that looks like. Like it might use some API that you've never heard of. And what you're actually doing at that point is like you're writing a clean comment, just wishing and praying that you know, the generation is long enough and gets you, gets you far enough, right?[00:20:57] acceleration mode is basically you are doing things where you are very confident in what you're doing and effectively. Code gives you that muscle so that you can basically stay in flow state and you're not thinking about like exactly what the APIs look like, but push comes to shove. You will figure out what the APIs look like, but actually like mentally, it takes off like a load in your head where you're like, oh wow.[00:21:18] Like I can just do this. The intent to execution is just a lot, a lot lower there. And I think effectively you want a tool that captures that a little bit. And we have heuristics in terms of captur. Whether or not you're in acceleration versus exploration mode. And a good heuristic is, let's say you're inside like a basic block of a piece of code.[00:21:37] Let's say you're inside a a block of code or an IF statement, you're probably already in acceleration mode and you would feel really bad if I started generating the ELs clause. Because what happens if that else causes really wrong? That's gonna cause like mental load for you because you are the way programmers think.[00:21:51] They only want to complete the if statement first, if that makes sense. So there are things where we are mindful of like how many lines we generate if you use the product, like multi-line generations happen and we are happy to do them, but we don't want to do them when we think it's gonna increase load on developers, if that makes sense.[00:22:07] That[00:22:07] Alessio Fanelli: makes sense. So co-pilot for x. , what are access that you think are interesting for people to build[00:22:13] Varun Mohan: in? Didn't we see some, some tweet recently about Harvey ai, uh, company that, that is trying to sell legal? It's like a legal, legal assistance. That's, that's pretty impressive, honestly. That's very impressive.[00:22:23] So it seems like I would really love to see what the product looks like there, because there's a lot of text there. You know, looking at bing, bing, ai, like, I mean, it's, it's pretty cool. But it seems like groundedness is something a lot of these products struggle with, and I assume legal, if there's one thing you want them to.[00:22:39] To get right. It's like the groundedness. Yeah.[00:22:42] swyx: Yeah. I've made the analogy before that law and legal language is basically just another form of programming language. You have to be that precise. Yes. Definitions must be made, and you can scroll to find the definition. It's the same thing. Yes. ,[00:22:55] Varun Mohan: yes. Yeah. But like, I guess there's a question of like comprehensiveness.[00:22:59] So like, let's say, let's say the only way it generates a suggestion is it provides like, you know, citations to other legal. You don't want it to be the case that it misses things, so you somehow need the comprehensiveness, but also at the same time, you also don't want it to make conclusions that are not from the site, the things at sites.[00:23:15] So, I don't know, like that's, that's very impressive. It's clear that they've demonstrated some amount of value because they've been able to close a fairly sizable enterprise contract. It was like a firm with 3,500 lawyers, something nuts, honestly. Very cool. So it's clear this is gonna happen, uh, and I think people are gonna need to be clever about how they actually make it work.[00:23:34] Within the constraints of whatever workload they're operating in. Also, you, you guys[00:23:37] swyx: are so good at trading stuff, why don't you, you try[00:23:39] Varun Mohan: cloning it. Yeah. So I think, I think that's, that's, uh, preview the roadmap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, but I'm just kidding. I think one of the things that we genuinely believe as a startup is most startups can't really even do one thing properly.[00:23:52] Mm-hmm. Focus. Yeah. Yeah. Usually doing one thing is really hard. Most companies that go public have like maybe a couple big products. They don't really have like 10, so we're under no illusions. Give the best product experience, the amount of engineering and attention to detail, to build one good product as hard.[00:24:08] So it's probably gonna be a while before we even consider leaving code. Like that's gonna be a big step because the amount of learning we need to do is gonna be high. We need to get users right. We've learned so much from our users already, so, yeah, I don't think we'd go into law anytime soon.[00:24:22] swyx: 3,500 lawyers with Ellen and Ry, uh, is, is is apparently the, the new[00:24:27] Varun Mohan: That's actually really big.[00:24:28] Yeah. Yeah. I can congrat.[00:24:29] swyx: Yeah, it's funny cuz like, it seems like these guys are moving faster than co-pilot. You know, co-pilot just launched, just announced enterprise, uh, like co-pilot for teams or co-pilot for Enterprise. Yeah. After like two years of testing.[00:24:40] Varun Mohan: Yeah, it does seem like the co-pilot team has built a very, very good product.[00:24:44] Um, so I don't wanna like say anything, but I think it is the case to startups will be able to move faster. I feel like that is true, but hey, like GitHub has great distribution. Whatever product they do have, they will be able to sell it really. Shall[00:24:56] swyx: we go into model numbers and infra estimates? our favorite[00:25:01] Varun Mohan: topics.[00:25:02] Nice small models. Nice.[00:25:04] swyx: So this is, um, relevant to basically I'm researching a lot of skilling law stuff. You have a lot of thoughts. You, you host paper discussions[00:25:12] Varun Mohan: in your team. Yeah, we, we try to like read papers that we think are really interesting and relevant to us. Recently that's been, there's just a fire hose of papers.[00:25:21] You know, someone even just curating what papers we should read internally as a company. Yeah, I think, I think there's, there's so much good content[00:25:28] swyx: out there. You should, you guys should have a podcast. I mean, I told you this before. Should have a podcast. Just, just put a mic near where, where you guys are[00:25:33] Varun Mohan: talking.[00:25:34] We gotta, we gotta keep developing coding though, . No, but you're doing this discussion[00:25:38] swyx: anyway. You[00:25:38] Varun Mohan: might as well just, oh, put the discussion on a podcast. I feel like some of the, some of the thoughts are raw, right? Like, they're not gonna be as, as nuanced. Like we'll just say something completely stupid during our discussions.[00:25:48] I don't know, , maybe that's exciting. Maybe that's, it's kinda like a justin.tv, but for ML papers, Okay, cool. I watched that.[00:25:55] swyx: Okay, so co-pilot is 12 billion parameters. Salesforce cogen is up to 16. G P t three is 175. GP four is gonna be 100 trillion billion. Yeah. So what, what we landed on with you is with, uh, with Cilla, is that we now have an idea of what compute optimal data scaling is.[00:26:14] Yeah. Which is about 20 times parameters. Is that intuitive to you? Like what, what did that[00:26:18] Varun Mohan: unlock? I think basically what this shows is that bigger models are like more data efficient, like given the same number of tokens, a big model like trained on the same number of tokens. A bigger model is like, is gonna learn more basically.[00:26:32] But also at the same time, the way you have to look at it is there are more flops to train a bigger model on the same number of tokens. So like let's say I had a 10 billion parameter model and I trained it on on 1 million tokens, but then I had a 20 billion parameter model at the end of it will be a better.[00:26:47] It will have better perplexity numbers, which means like the probability of like a prediction is gonna be better for like the next token is gonna be better. But at the end of it, you did burn twice the amount of compute on it. Right? So Shinto is an interesting observation, which says if you have a fixed compute budget, And you want the best model that came out of it because there's like a difference here where a model that is, that is smaller, trained on the same number of tokens as fewer flops.[00:27:12] There's a a sweet spot of like number of tokens and size a model. I will say like people probably like. Are talking about it more than they should, and, and I'll, I'll explain why, but it's a useful result, which is like, let's say I have, you know, some compute budget and I want the best model. It tells you what that, what you should generate.[00:27:31] The problem I think here is there is a real trade off of like, you do need to run this model somewhere. You need to run it on a piece of hardware. So then it comes down to how much memory does that piece of hardware have. Let's say for a fixed compute budget, you could train a 70 billion parameter. What are you gonna put that on?[00:27:47] Yeah, maybe you could, could you put that on an 80 gig, A 100? It would be a stretch. You could do things like f, you know, in eight F p a, to reduce the amount of memory that's on the box and do all these other things. But you have to think about that first, right? When you want to go out and train that model.[00:27:59] The worst case is you ended up training that mo, that model, and you cannot serve it. So actually what you end up finding is for a lot of these code completion models, they are actually what you would consider over-trained . So by that I mean like, let's look at a model like Cogen. It's actually trained on, I believe, and, and I could be wrong by, you know, a hundred billion here or there.[00:28:18] I got some data. Oh, okay. Let's look at the 3 billion parameter model. It's a 2.7. I think it's actually a 2.7 billion barometer model. It's weird because they also trained on natural language on top of code, but it's trained on hundreds of billions of tokens. If you applied that chinchilla, Optimization to it, you'd be like, wow, this is, this is a stupid use of compute.[00:28:36] Right? Because three, they should be going to 60, any anything more than 60. And they're like, they should have just increased the model size. But the reality is if they had like the compute optimal one might not be one that's easy to serve, right? It could just have more parameters. And for our case, our models that we train internally, they might not be the most compute.[00:28:56] In other words, we probably could have had a better model by making it larger, but the trade off would've been latency. We know what the impact of having higher latency is, and on top of that, being able to fit properly on our hardware constraints would've also been a concern.[00:29:08] swyx: Isn't the classic stopping point when you, you see like loss kind of levels off.[00:29:12] Right now you're just letting chinchilla tell you,[00:29:16] Varun Mohan: but like you should just look at loss. The problem is the loss will like continue to go down. It'll just continue to go down like, like in a, in a way that's like not that pleasing. It's gonna take longer and longer. It's gonna be painful, but it's like one of those things where if you look at the perplexity number of difference between.[00:29:31] Let's say a model that's like 70 billion versus 10 billion. It's not massive. It's not like tens of percentage points. It's like very small, right? Mm. The reality is here, like, I mean this comes down to like IQ of like these models in some sense, like small wins at the margins are massive wins in terms of iq.[00:29:47] Like it's harder to get those and they don't look as big, but they're like massive wins in terms of reasoning. They can now do chain of thought, all these other things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.[00:29:55] swyx: It's, and, and so apparently unlocked around the[00:29:57] Varun Mohan: 20 billion. Yes. That's right. Some kind of magic. Yeah. I think that was from the UL two or maybe one of those land papers.[00:30:03] Any thoughts on why? Like is there is? I don't know. I mean, emergence of intelligence, I think. I think maybe one of the things is like we don't even know, maybe like five years from now of what we're gonna be running are transformers. But I think it's like, we don't, we don't 100% know that that's true. I mean, there's like a lot of maybe issues with the current version of the transformers, which is like the way attention works, the attention layers work, the amount of computers quadratic in the context sense, because you're like doing like an n squared operation on the attention blocks basically.[00:30:30] And obviously, you know, one of the things that everyone wants right now is infinite context. They wanna shove as much prop as possible in here. And the current version of what a transformer looks like is maybe not ideal. You might just end up burning a lot of flops on this when there are probably more efficient ways of doing it.[00:30:45] So I'm, I'm sure in the future there's gonna be tweaks to this. Yeah. Uh, but it is interesting that we found out interesting things of like, hey, bigger is pretty much always better. There are probably ways of making smaller models significantly better through better data. That is like definitely true. Um, And I think one of the cool things that the stack showed actually was they did a, like a, I think they did some ablation studies where they were like, Hey, what happens if we do, if we do decontamination of our data, what happens if we do de-duplication?[00:31:14] What happens if we do near dup of our data and how does the model get better? And they have like some compelling results that showcase data quality really matters here, but ultimately, Yeah, I think it is an interesting result that at 20 billion there's something happening. But I also think like some of these things in the future may look materially different than what they look like right now.[00:31:30] Hmm. Do you think[00:31:31] Alessio Fanelli: the token limitation is actually a real architectural limitation? Like if you think about the tokens need as kind of like atic, right? Like once you have. 50,000 tokens context, like 50,000 or infinite. For most use cases, it's like the same. Where do you think that number is, especially as you think about code, like some people have very large code bases, there's a lot.[00:31:53] Have you done any work there to figure out where the sweet[00:31:55] Varun Mohan: spot is? Yeah, look, I think what's gonna really end up happening is if people come up with a clever way and, and it, there was some result research that I believe came out of Stanford. I think the team from the Helm group, I think came out with some architecture that looks a little bit different than Transformers, and I'm sure something like this will work in the future.[00:32:13] What I think is always gonna happen is if you find a cheap way to embed context, people are gonna figure out a way to, to put as much as possible in because L LM so far have been like virtually stateless. So the only thing that they have beyond fine tuning is like just shoveling everything you can inside.[00:32:28] And there are some interesting papers, like retro, actually there are maybe some interesting pieces of thought like ideas that have come out recently. Yeah, let's go through them. So one of the really interesting ideas, I think is retro. It's this paper that came out of DeepMind and the idea is actually, let's say you send out, you send out, uh, a prompt.[00:32:44] Okay? Send out a prompt. You compute the burt embedding of that. And then you have this massive embedding database. And by massive, I'm not talking about like gigabytes, I'm talking about terabytes. Like you have, geez, you actually have 10 times the number of tokens as what was used to train the model. So like, let's say you had a model that was trained on a trillion tokens, you have a 10 trillion embed, uh, like embedding database.[00:33:04] And obviously Google has this because they have all content that ever existed in humanity and they have like the best data set and sort of, they were able to make one of these, uh, embedding databases. But the idea here, which is really cool, is you end. Taking your prompt, computing, the bird, embedding you find out the things that were nearby.[00:33:20] So you do roughly like a semantic search or an embedding search within that. And then you take those, you take the documents that were from those embeddings and you shove those in the model too, in what are called like cross chunked attention. So you like shove them in the model with it as well.[00:33:34] Suddenly now the model is able to take in external. Which is really exciting actually, because suddenly now you're able to get dynamic context in, and the model in some sense is deciding what that context is. It's not deciding it completely. In this case, because the Bert model in this case was actually frozen.[00:33:50] It wasn't trained with the retro model as well, but. The idea is you're somehow adding or augmenting context, which I think is like quite exciting. There's probably two futures. Either context becomes really cheap. Right now it's quadratic. Maybe there's a future where it becomes linear in the, in the size of the context, but the future might actually be the model itself dictates, Hey, I have this context.[00:34:10] You have this data source. Give me this. The model itself is going out into your database and like being like, I want this information, and this is kind of like. What Bing search is looking like. Right? Or bing chat is sort of looking like where it's like I, the model is probably, there's probably some model that's saying I want this information.[00:34:27] And that is getting augmented into the context. Now the model itself knows what context it sort of has and it can sort of like build a state machine of sort of what it needs. And that's probably what the future of this looks like. So you, you[00:34:37] swyx: predict monster embedding database[00:34:39] Varun Mohan: companies? Probably Monster embedding database companies or, yeah.[00:34:43] The model in some sense will need to talk to, Talk to these embedding databases. I'm actually not convinced that the current breed of embedding database companies are like ready for what the future sort of looks like. I think I'm just looking at their pricing, how much it costs per gigabyte and it's prohibitive at the scale we're talking about, like let's say you actually did want to host a 10 terabyte embedding database.[00:35:03] A lot of them were created, let's say two years ago, two, three years ago, where people were like, you know, embedding databases are small and they need to make the cost economics work. But maybe, yeah, there's probably gonna be a big workload there. I will just say for us, we will probably just build this in-house to start with, and that's because I think the technology probably isn't there.[00:35:20] And I think that the technology isn't there yet. Like waiting on point solutions to come up is a lot harder, um, than probably building it up. The way I, I like to think about this is probably the world looks on the LM space. Looks like how the early internet days were, where I think the value was accrued to probably like Google and Google needed to figure out all the crazy things to make their workload work.[00:35:41] And the reason why they weren't able to outsource is, is no one else was feeling the pain. ,[00:35:46] swyx: they're just solving their own pain points. They're just solving their own pain points. They're so far ahead of everyone else. Yes, yes. And just wait[00:35:50] Varun Mohan: for people to catch up. Yes. Yes. And that's maybe different than how things like Snowflake look where the interface has been decided for what SQL looks like 50 years ago.[00:35:58] And because of that, you can go out and build the best database and Yeah, like everyone's gonna be like, this doesn't make my beer taste better. And buy your database basically. That's[00:36:08] swyx: a great reference, by the way. Yeah. We have some friends of the, the pod that are working on embedding database, so we'll try to connect you Toroma[00:36:14] Varun Mohan: and see.[00:36:14] Yeah. Oh, I actually know Anton. I worked with him at Neuro. Oh. Although, there you go. Yeah. Uh, what do you, well, what do you think about, I mean,[00:36:20] swyx: so chromas pivoting towards an embedding[00:36:22] Varun Mohan: database. I think it's an interesting idea. I think it's an interesting idea. I wonder what the early set of workloads that.[00:36:27] They will hit our, and you know what the scaling requirements are. This is maybe the classic thing where like, the teams are great, but you need to pick a workload here that you care about the most. You could build anything. You could build anything. When you're an infrastructure company, you can go in, if I was selling, serving in for, I could build, serving for like linear aggression.[00:36:44] I could build this, but like, unless you hit the right niche for the end user, it's gonna be. . So I think it, I'm excited to see what comes out and if they're great, then we'll use it. Yeah.[00:36:54] swyx: I also like how you slowly equated yourself to Google there. Oh, we're not, we're not Google. You're, you're gonna be the Google of ai.[00:37:00] Varun Mohan: We're definitely, we're definitely not Google. But I was just saying in terms of like, if you look at like the style of companies that came out. Yeah. You know? Absolutely. Or maybe we should live in the cutting edge in[00:37:08] swyx: the future. Yeah. I think that's the pitch.[00:37:10] Varun Mohan: Okay, thanks for b***h us.[00:37:13] Alessio Fanelli: So you just mentioned the older vector embedding source are kind of not made for the L l M generation of compute size.[00:37:21] what does l LM ops look like? You know, which pieces need to be drastically different? Which ones can we recycle?[00:37:27] Varun Mohan: Yeah. One of the things that we've found, like in our own thing of building code that's been just shows how much is missing, and this is the thing where like, I don't know how much of this you can really outsource, which is like we needed to build eval infrastructure.[00:37:40] That means how do you build a great code? And there are things online like human eval, right? And uh, I was telling, which is the benchmark telling Sean about this, the idea of human eval is really neat for code. The idea is you provide a bunch of functions with Docstrings and the eval instead of being, did you predict next token?[00:37:56] It's like, did you generate the entire function and does the function run correctly against a bunch of unit tests? Right. And we've built more sophisticated evals to work on many languages, to work on more variety of code bases. One of the issues that ends up coming up with things like human eval is contam.[00:38:12] Because a lot of these, uh, things that train models end up training on all of GitHub GitHub itself has human eva, so they end up training on that. And then the numbers are tiny, though. It's gonna be tiny, right? But it doesn't matter if it's tiny because it'll just remember it. It'll remember that it's, it's not that it's that precise, but it will, it's like, it's basically like mixing your, your training and validation set.[00:38:32] It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we've seen cases where like online where someone is like, we have a code model that's like, they we're like, we did this one thing, and HU and human eval jumped a ton and we were just like, huh, did human eval get into your data set? Is that really what happened there?[00:38:46] But we've needed to build all this eval. And what is shown is data cleaning is massive, but data cleaning looks different by. Like code data cleaning is different than what is a high quality piece of code is probably different than what's a high quality legal document. Yeah. And then on top of that, how do you eval this?[00:39:01] How do you also train it at scale at whatever cost you really want to get? But those are things that the end user is either gonna need to solve or someone else is gonna need to solve for them. And I guess maybe one of the things I'm a little bearish on is if another company comes out and solves eval properly for a bunch of different verticals, what was the company that they were selling to really?[00:39:21] What were they really doing at that point? If they themselves were not eval for their own workload and all these other things? I think there are cases where, let's say for code where we probably couldn't outsource our eval, like we wouldn't be able to ship models internally if we didn't know how to eval, but it's clear that there's a lot of different things that people need to take.[00:39:38] Like, Hey, maybe there's an embedding piece. How large is this embedding database actually need to be? But hey, this does look very different than what classic ML ops probably did. Mm-hmm. . How[00:39:47] Alessio Fanelli: do you compare some of these models? Like when you're thinking about model upgrading and making changes, like what does the testing piece of it internally?[00:39:56] Yeah. For us look like.[00:39:56] Varun Mohan: For us, it's like old school AB testing. We've built like infrastructure to be able to say, ramp up users from one to 10 to. 50% and slowly roll things out. This is all classic software, uh, which[00:40:09] swyx: you do in-house. You don't, you don't buy any[00:40:10] Varun Mohan: services. We don't buy services for that.[00:40:13] There are good services, open source services that help you just don't need them. Uh, yeah, I think that's just like not the most complicated thing for us. Sure. Basically. Yeah. Uh, but I think in the future, maybe, we'll, obviously we use things like Google Analytics and all this other stuff, but Yeah. For things of ramping our models, finding out if they're actually better because the eval also doesn't tell the whole story because also for us, Even before generating the prompt, we do a lot of work.[00:40:36] And the only way to know that it's really good across all the languages that our users need to tell us that it's actually good. And, and they tell us by accepting completions. So, so GitHub[00:40:44] swyx: co-pilot, uh, the extension does this thing where they, they like, they'll set a timer and then within like five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, they'll check in to see if the code is still there.[00:40:54] I thought it was a[00:40:54] Varun Mohan: pretty creative way. It's, it's a very, it's honestly a very creative way. We do do things to see, like in the long term, if people did. Accept or write things that are roughly so because they could accept and then change their minds. They could accept and then change their minds. So we, we are mindful of, of things like that.[00:41:09] But for the most part, the most important metric is at the time, did they actually, did we generate value? And we want to know if that's true. And it's, it's kind of, it's honestly really hard to get signal unless you have like a non-trivial amount of usage, non-trivial, meaning you're getting, you're doing hundreds of thousands of completions, if not millions of completions.[00:41:25] That sounds like, oh wow. Like, that's like a very small amount. But like it's classic. Maybe like if you look at like when I used to be an intern at Quora, like, you know, now more than seven, eight years ago. When I was there, I like shipped a change and then Cora had like millions of daily actives and then it looked like it was good, and then a week later it was just like way worse.[00:41:43] And how is this possible? Like in a given hour we get like hundreds of thousands of interaction, just like, no, you just need way more data. So this is like one of those things where I think having users is like genuinely very valuable to us, basically. Users is all you need. . Yeah.[00:41:59] swyx: Um, by the way, since you brought out Quora, have you tried po any, any thoughts[00:42:03] Varun Mohan: on po I have not actually tried po I've not actually tried.[00:42:05] I[00:42:05] swyx: mean, it seems like a question answering website that's been around for 20 years or something. Would be very, would be very good at question answering. Yeah.[00:42:12] Varun Mohan: Also Adam, the ceo, is like incredibly brilliant. That guy is like insanely smart, so I'm sure they're gonna do,[00:42:18] swyx: they have accidentally built the perfect like data collection company for For qa.[00:42:22] Varun Mohan: Yeah. . It takes a certain kind of person to go and like cannibalize your original company like the in, I mean, it was kinda stagnant for like a few years. Yeah, that's probably true. That's[00:42:31] swyx: probably true. The observation is I feel like you have a bias to its domain specific. , whereas most research is skewed towards, uh, general models, general purpose models.[00:42:40] I don't know if there's like a, a deeper insight here that you wanna go into or, or not, but like, train on all the things, get all the data and you're like, no, no, no. Everyone needs like customized per task,[00:42:49] Varun Mohan: uh, data set. Yeah. I think I'm not gonna. Say that general intelligence is not good. You want a base model that's still really good and that's probably trained on normal text, like a lot of different content.[00:43:00] But I think probably one thing that old school machine learning, even though I'm like the kind of person that says a lot of old school machine learning is just gonna die, is that training on a high quality data set for your workload is, is always gonna yield better results and more, more predictable results.[00:43:15] And I think we are under no illusions that that's not the case. Basical. And[00:43:19] swyx: then the other observation is bandwidth and connectivity, uh, which is not something that people usually think about, but apparently is a, is a big deal. Apparently training agreed in the synchronous needs, high GPU coordination.[00:43:29] These are deleted notes from Sam Altman talking about how they think about training and I was like, oh yeah, that's an insight. And[00:43:34] Varun Mohan: you guys have the same thing. Yeah. So I guess for, for training, you're right in that it is actually nuts to think about how insane the networks are for NVIDIA's most recent hardware, it's.[00:43:46] For the H 100 boxes, you shove eight of these H 100 s on a. Between two nodes. The bandwidth is 3,200 gigabits a second, so 400 gigabytes a second between machines. That's like nuts when you just sit and think about it. That's like double the memory bandwidth of what a CPU has, but it's like between two machines.[00:44:04] On top of that, within the machine, they've created this, this fabric called envy link that allows you to communicate at ultra low latency. That's even lower than P C I E. If you're familiar, that's like the communication protocol. . Yeah, between like the CPU and the other devices or other P C I E devices.[00:44:21] All of this is to make sure that reductions are fast, low latency, and you don't need to think about it. And that's because like a lot of deep learning has sort of evolved. Uh, training has evolved to be synchronous in the OG days. There is a lot of analysis in terms of how good is asynchronous training, which is like, Hey, I have a node, it has a current state of the model.[00:44:39] It's gonna update that itself locally, and it'll like every once in a while, go to another machine and update the weights. But I think like everyone has converged to synchronous. I'm not exactly sure. There's not a lot of good research on asynchronous training right now. Or maybe there is an, I haven't read it.[00:44:52] It's just that there isn't as much research because people are just like, oh, synchronous works. Uh, and the hardware is continually upleveled to handle[00:44:59] swyx: that. Yeah. It was just un unintuitive to me cuz like the whole purpose of GPUs could train things. A lot of things in parallel. Yes.[00:45:05] Varun Mohan: But the crazy thing is also, maybe I can, I can give some dumb math here.[00:45:09] Sure. Here, which is that, uh, let's go with uh, G B T three, which is like 170 billion per. The optimizer state, so while you're training is 14 times the size of the model, so in this case, if it's like 170 billion parameters, it's probably, I'm not great at mental math here, but that's probably around 2.5 terabytes to just store the optimizer state.[00:45:30] That has gotta be sharded across a lot of machines. Like that is not a single gpu. Even if you take an H 100 with 80 gigs to just shard that much, that's like 40, at least 30 machines. So there's like something there where these things need to communicate with each other too.[00:45:44] swyx: You need to vertically scale horizontally.[00:45:46] Varun Mohan: Yeah. You gotta co-located, you gotta somehow feel like you have this massive, the, the ideal programming paradigm is you feel like you have this massive computer. That has no communication, you know, overhead at all, but it has like infinite computer and infinite memory bandwidth.[00:45:59] swyx: That's the AI cluster. Um, okay, well, uh, we want to head to the questions.[00:46:05] Alessio Fanelli: So favorite AI product that you are not[00:46:08] Varun Mohan: building? Yeah, I'm friends with some of the folks at Mid Journey and I really think the Mid Journey product is super cool, especially seeing how the team is iterating and the quality of generations. It consistently gets upleveled. I think it's like quite neat and I think internally at at exa functional, we've been trying out mid Journey for like random content to like generate images and stuff.[00:46:26] Does it bother[00:46:26] swyx: you that they have like a style. I don't know. It, it seems like they're hedging themselves into a particular, like you want mid journey art, you go there.[00:46:33] Varun Mohan: Yeah. It's a brand of art. Yeah, you're right. I think they do have a style, but it seems more predictably good for that style. Okay. So maybe that's too, so just get good at, uh, domain specific thing.[00:46:41] Yeah. Yeah. maybe. Maybe I, maybe I'm just selling, talking to a booker right now. . Yeah. Uh, okay.[00:46:46] swyx: Uh, next question. Uh, favorite AI people and[00:46:48] Varun Mohan: communities? Yeah, so I think I mentioned this before, but I think obviously the open. The opening eye folks are, are insane. Like we, we only have respect for them. But beyond that, I think Elu is a pretty special group.[00:46:59] Especially it's been now probably more than a year and a half since they released like G P T J, which was like back when open source G PT three Curri, which was comparable. And it wasn't like a model where like, It wasn't good. It was like comparable in terms of perplexity to GT three curity and it was trained by a university student actually, and it just showed that, you know, in the end, like I would say pedigree is great, but in if you have people that are motivated know how computers work and they're willing to just get their hands dirty, you can do crazy things and that was a crazy project that gave me more hope.[00:47:34] Decentral training being potentially pretty massive. But I think that was like a very cool thing where a bunch of people just got on Discord and were chatting and they were able to just turn this out. Yeah. I did[00:47:42] swyx: not know this until I looked in further into Luther, but it was not a formal organization.[00:47:45] Was a company was a startup. It's not, yeah. Bunch of guys on Discord.[00:47:48] Varun Mohan: They gotta you, they gotta keep you research grant and they somehow just wrote some codes. .[00:47:52] Alessio Fanelli: Yeah. Yeah. Listen to APAC with Connor, who's the person, and basically Open Eye at the time was like, we cannot release G P T because it's like too good and so bad.[00:48:01] And he was like, He actually said he was sick, so he couldn't leave home for like a, a few weeks. So it was like, what else am I gonna do? And ended up

Each week, the leading journalists in legal tech choose their top stories of the week to discuss with our other panelists. This week's topics: 00:00 - Introductions 03:30 - DoNotPay (Selected by Steven Lerner) 21:20 - Allen & Overy deploys Harvey AI, more firms TK (Selected by Bob Ambrogi) 29:40 - Colombia to Hold Court Hearing in the Metaverse (Selected by Stephanie Wilkins) 34:30 - NY Makes Notaries More Accessible By Passing Online Notary Law (Selected by Niki Black) 43:05 - Leadership Blaming Working From Home For Its Own Data Privacy Failures (Selected by Joe Patrice) 48:50 - Filevine LEX Summit (Selected by Bob Ambrogi) 48:50 - What to expect from ABA Techshow 2023 (Selected by Victor Li)

Taxonomies: This is a topic that has dominated many conversations in the sustainability world in recent years. In this episode of the ESG Insider podcast, we explore the growing number of taxonomies around the world. In simple terms, a taxonomy is a kind of dictionary of sustainable activities designed to provide clarity on which economic activities are sustainable and to support investment flows into those activities. A recently released report from international conservation organization WWF and German sustainable finance think tank Climate & Co. finds dozens of sustainable finance taxonomies have been introduced or are being developed across the globe.   To learn more about the role of taxonomies, we speak to two of the report's authors: Jochen Krimphoff, who is Data, Tools and Methodology Lead for WWF's Greening Financial Regulation Initiative, and Climate & Co. Analyst Daniel Scharwies. We also talk with Matthew Townsend, Co-Head of the International Environmental, Climate and Regulatory Law Groups at law firm Allen & Overy.   Read the report from WWF and Climate & Co. here: https://wwfin.awsassets.panda.org/downloads/when_finance_talks_nature.pdf     We'd love to hear from you. To give us feedback on this episode or share ideas for future episodes, please contact hosts Lindsey Hall (lindsey.hall@spglobal.com) and Esther Whieldon (esther.whieldon@spglobal.com).   Copyright ©2023 by S&P Global   DISCLAIMER   By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty, guarantee, or representation as to the accuracy or sufficiency of the information featured in this Podcast. The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice. Unless specifically stated otherwise, S&P GLOBAL does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this Podcast, and information from this Podcast should not be referenced in any way to imply such approval or endorsement. The third party materials or content of any third party site referenced in this Podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions, standards or policies of S&P GLOBAL. S&P GLOBAL assumes no responsibility or liability for the accuracy or completeness of the content contained in third party materials or on third party sites referenced in this Podcast or the compliance with applicable laws of such materials and/or links referenced herein. Moreover, S&P GLOBAL makes no warranty that this Podcast, or the server that makes it available, is free of viruses, worms, or other elements or codes that manifest contaminating or destructive properties.   S&P GLOBAL EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY INDIVIDUAL'S USE OF, REFERENCE TO, RELIANCE ON, OR INABILITY TO USE, THIS PODCAST OR THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS PODCAST.

Neues Jahr, neuer Job? Zum Jahresbeginn gibt euch ein echter Profi spannende Insights zu allen Fragen rund um eure perfekte Bewerbung: Bianca Städter, Managerin Legal Recruitment bei Allen & Overy. Wie findet man überhaupt heraus, wo man sich eigentlich bewerben möchte? Braucht es heutzutage noch ein An- und/oder Motivationsschreiben? Wie schaut ein professioneller Lebenslauf aus? Welche No-Gos gibt's aus Biancas Sicht beim Thema Fotos? Wie sollte man sich verhalten, wenn man von einer Kanzlei angesprochen und eingeladen wurde? Wie bereitet man sich idealerweise auf ein Bewerbungsgespräch vor? Wie sollte man im Bewerbungsgespräch auftreten? Wie geht man mit etwaigen Lücken im Lebenslauf um? Welche Rolle spielen die Noten? Was kann durch Promotion und oder LL.M. "ausgeglichen" werden? Antworten auf diese Fragen, wertvolle Tipps für Euren nächsten Schritte und vieles mehr in dieser Folge - viel Spaß!

A collaborative energy approach, like that of the European Union (EU), is needed in Southern Africa, says Namibia presidential economic adviser James Mnyupe. At least South Africa and Namibia should put together a case that shows seriousness about decarbonising sub Saharan Africa, says Mnyupe, with the two countries looking to share with the world the burden of building the required pipeline and transmission line infrastructure. Mnyupe, who was a panel member at the Hydrogen Economy Discussion, says EU-like collaborative regional and continental approaches are needed in the renewable energy and green hydrogen space. Moderated by Allen & Overy counsel Gillian Niven, the other panel members were EU-South Africa trade policy officer Darryn Allan, International Renewable Energy Agency programme officer policy Emanuele Bianco, and RebelGroup Southern Africa senior consultant Laurens Cloete. Mnyupe says African policy makers need to be aware of the different policy toolbox needed for African countries playing different roles. For example, Namibia is poised to be an exporter of green hydrogen, South Africa perhaps a net importer and others playing a self-sufficient roles. “If you look at Morocco, it may export but it has really large industries that it may need to decarbonise, and South Africa might very well be a good example of that as well. “Depending on what type of country you are, you will need to think strategically about the different pieces of legislation and policy that you would want to be championing. “For example, if you are an exporter like Namibia, you will be thinking very hard about securing offtake agreements with clientele countries,” he highlights. For others, the focus will be on regulating pricing for the use of specific infrastructure, such as pipelines and ports, and the need for some of that infrastructure needing to be common-user infrastructure so that the original builder of the pipeline does not necessarily restrict access to others down the line. From an upstream perspective, there will be a need for collocating assets in a way that makes sense. Namibia, with both good wind and solar in one jurisdiction, will need to ensure that it puts legislation for special economic zones around the generating assets to facilitate industrialisation clusters or a hydrogen valley around the generation assets. Thought needs to be given to the prospect of assembling wind blades close to where the wind turbines will be located to negate the need to transport these large pieces of infrastructure over long distances. “Figure out whether you are a net importer or a net exporter - something that I think is very important from an African perspective as well as beginning to think about inter-regional trade,” he adds. He foresees not only green molecules in the form of green hydrogen and its derivatives being transported around Southern Africa but also green electrons in the form of renewable energy. It could be that South Africa will be importing some of the molecules from Namibia to decarbonise its hard-to-abate sectors. “The one thing I would like to remind all African States to bear in mind is that hydrogen is not purely a molecule play. When you deploy very large renewable energy assets at scale, you will be getting electron connectivity. You could capture some of that, use that to become self-sufficient but possibly to trade electrons as well into the Southern African Power Pool. President Cyril Ramaphosa on 25 July spoke about South Africa possibly needing to consider importing electricity from neighbouring countries that have excess electricity. “If that electricity happens to be good, clean renewable energy that is cheap and affordable, I think that presents a really great opportunity for South Africa and its neighbours, such as Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. That's what Africans need to start thinking about when looking at the hydrogen opportunity. Both Namibia and South Africa are looking at green hydro...

Greylist has black and white economic outcome. I'm pleased to see South Africa's looming potential greylisting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is starting to receive the attention it deserves. National Treasury has certainly upped the ante publicly along with several respected CEOs, including Sim Tshabalala of Standard Bank and Hendrik du Toit of Ninety One. One wonders where this issue sits on the president's priority list (I suspect somewhere near the bottom) but the consequences for the country, local businesses and ordinary South Africans would be dire, increasing the cost of doing business, weakening the country's investment attractiveness and further cementing our decline towards ochlocracy. This past week the Prudential Authority (PA) released its second banking sector risk assessment. It surveyed 34 lenders active in SA, including five large banks, nine medium to small locally controlled banks, 17 foreign-controlled banks and branches of foreign banks, and three mutual banks. To talk about this Michael Avery is joined by Rebecca Thomson, Senior Associate at Allen & Overy's Litigation, Arbitration and Dispute Resolution practice and Paul O'Sullivan, founder of Paul O'Sullivan & Associates (the leading experts in Forensic & Fraud Investigation in South Africa)

Matteo is the Co-Founder and CEO of Eight Sleep, the world's leading sleep enhancement company. Named one of the Most Innovative Companies in Consumer Electronics by Fast Company, Eight is redesigning the traditional concept of a mattress, by developing cutting-edge AI and machine learning models to track bio signals during sleep to optimize body recovery and rest.    Prior to Eight, Matteo co-founded and led GIR (acquired in 2014) and Global Investment (acquired 2011), two companies in the renewable energy space. Matteo has been Co-Chair at FWD.us and Mentor at Techstars, Microsoft Bizpark and the NYU Summer Launchpad Program. He is also a Member of the Forbes Technology Council.   Born in Italy and currently living in NYC, Matteo graduated magna cum laude with a Law degree from University of Ferrara. He was a member of the Italian Bar Association while working as a lawyer in the finance practice of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Allen & Overy, both part of the Magic Circle of British's elite law firms.   Connect with our guests:   Matteo Franceschetti   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Dr. Andy Galpin on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   Dan Garner on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Please Support Our Sponsors   Eight Sleep - Save $150 on the Pod Pro and Pod Pro Cover   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

This week, on Movers, Shakers & Rainmakers: The Biglaw Lateral Market, our hosts chat with a true gamechanger in the legal world: Andre Gharakhanian, the founder of Silicon Legal Strategy. Andre joins our hosts to discuss what 2021 was like for Emerging Companies and Venture Capital ("EC/VC") deals, how the booming market is still going strong in 2022, how the culture he has created at Silicon Legal Strategy has helped grow the firm to incredible heights in a very short period of time, and what he expects for the future of his firm and EC/VC practice in general. Our hosts also dive into recent shake-ups in the legal world made by Allen & Overy, Goodwin, and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. As always, be sure to like, follow, and subscribe. 

Lack of expertise about getting giga-scale hydrogen projects off the ground is a big problem in the industry, say Allen & Overy South Africa's Alessandra Pardini and Alexandra Cluver, who believe they know how best it should be done from experience gained through project managing three of the world's largest green hydrogen projects. Mining Weekly can report that all three of the projects referenced are in the Middle East. These are projects that Allen & Overy teams in the Middle East have been working on, in terms of bringing green hydrogen to market. As a firm, Allen & Overy is involved globally in a number of green hydrogen efforts, including projects that have taken place and are in process across Europe and now in America and Australia. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.) As global appetite for giga-scale green hydrogen projects grows, the business risks associated with getting this promising industry out of the starting blocks are considerable. Still, they believe that green hydrogen has the potential to transform many sectors, including shipping, aviation and power generation. “This is thanks to its long-distance transportability from warm and windy locations like South Africa, to energy-hungry markets such as Europe who are at the forefront of exploring its potential as a climate-friendly energy source,” Pardini and Cluver state in a release to Mining Weekly. “It's an incredibly exciting time to be involved in the green hydrogen industry, but in order for it to reach meaningful global scale, as it should, it's necessary to address some of its start-up challenges,” they say, adding that it is absolutely vital to prepare a solid go-to-market strategy that tailors procurement processes to meet the demands of bankers, equity investors, offtakers and other key stakeholders. They believe the starting points should centre on whether or not the green hydrogen/ammonia plants should be built under a single engineering, procurement and construction contract or under multiple contracts, the manner of tailoring the required procurement processes and ascertaining the plant's long lead items. HOW TO FINANCE GREEN HYDROGEN They foresee giga-scale projects in the nascent sector more than likely involving multi-sourced financing, in which commercial banks combine with development finance institutions and export credit agencies. “It is necessary to put clear thought into how those parties will come together to serve the best interests of the project. “It is also necessary to put careful thought into the greater business and financial plan of the project, especially considering that most such projects take several years to become fully operational and a clear revenue strategy is critical in order to ensure that it is bankable,” they emphasise. ADVISORY TEAM BUILDING Giga-scale projects, they point out, require the best global expertise as well as local depth of knowledge. On green hydrogen, they say: “It's a new industry – real expertise out there is limited and one wants to work with experts who really know what they are talking about in terms of international requirements and local nuances. Also seen as crucial is solid regulatory advice to ensure that the project meets global green energy standards but – very importantly – also bring in advice on project development aspects such as procurement and construction, and project finance aspects such as banking, investment and funding models. OFFTAKE STRATEGIES AND AGREEMENTS Pardini and Cluver point to the importance of the structuring of any large-scale energy project being right from the get-go and place emphasis on the ultimate buyer of the green hydrogen and green ammonia and how the buyer intends to use the products. “Not all hydrogen is made equal. What is the offtake strategy and who is the offtaker? What is legally possible to achieve within the budget, timeframe, business plan and available resources?,” they ask. Unlike ‘brown hydrogen' produced from fossil fuels, ‘grey hyd...

"Je ne comprends pas un mot!“ - Das trifft es auf den Punkt: Bei Jura-Vorlesungen komplett auf Französisch würde Moritz wohl nur Bahnhof verstehen. Nicht so unser heutiger Gast Dr. Charlotte Willemer, Counsel bei Allen & Overy. Charlotte hat während Ihres Jurastudiums ein Auslandsjahr in Montpellier verbracht und dort die Licence en droit francais absolviert. Im Gespräch erfahren wir mehr über ihre Zeit in Südfrankreich und das Studieren an der Université de Montpellier. Apropos Studium: Charlotte hat zunächst Jura an der Uni Heidelberg studiert und dann ihr erstes Staatsexamen an der Humboldt-Universität in Berlin erfolgreich abgeschlossen…eine optimale Kombi um zu vergleichen: Traditionelle Uni vs. Hipster-Uni! Neben dem Thema juristische Ausbildung sprechen die beiden natürlich auch über Charlottes spannenden Arbeitsalltag als Counsel im Bereich Litigation. Das Thema Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Job findet heute ebenfalls Erwähnung, denn Charlotte ist in Teilzeit tätig - ein Arbeitsmodel das bei Allen & Overy ganz wunderbar funktioniert. Außerdem erfahren wir mehr über das Verhalten von Meerschweinchen im Hochsommer und klären zum Abschluss noch einmal auf warum Teleportieren ggf. cleverer sein kann als Telepatieren…ein informativer Themenmix also - Viel Spaß beim reinhören! Du bist noch nicht bei clavisto? Als exzellente Nachwuchsjurist*in bist Du bei uns genau richtig! Unser Talentprogramm bietet Dir vielfältige Karrierechancen, kostenlose Förderleistungen und begleitet Dich auf Deinem Weg in eine Top-Kanzlei. www.clavisto.de

In der heutigen Folge Eures begrüßen wir Dr. Maria Börner. Sie berichtet, wie man durch die Wahl des Rechtsgebiets das deutsche Jurastudium mit internationalen Sachverhalten verbinden kann. Sie ist als Anwältin bei Allen & Overy im Team Corporate / M&A tätig. Im Rahmen eines kanzleiinternen Secondments darf sie aktuell die ins & outs des Amsterdamer Kanzleibüros kennenlernen. Aber was ist überhaupt ein Secondment und welche Vorteile bietet ein solches? Wie unterscheidet sich der Arbeitsalltag in den Niederlanden von der deutschen Kanzleikultur? Was bedeutet Diversity für Kanzleien und warum ist das Thema so wichtig? Wie haben sich Kanzleien in diesem Bereich in den letzten Jahren weiterentwickelt? Was ist der heutigen Generation von Jurist*innen wichtig? Antworten auf diese Fragen sowie viele weitere Perspektiven gibt's in dieser Folge. Viel Spaß!

Proximo talks to Ferhat Afkar, a senior associate at Ginting & Reksodiputro in association with Allen & Overy, about the growth of the floating solar sector as a project finance asset class.

Proximo talks to Ferhat Afkar, a senior associate at Ginting & Reksodiputro in association with Allen & Overy, about the growth of the floating solar sector as a project finance asset class.

Facebook is the leading social network in the UK, as elsewhere. But has it unfairly treated its UK users? Dr. Liza Lovdahl Gormsen, competition law academic and practitioner, joins Matthew Hall and John Roberti to discuss her class action claim in the UK which seeks multi-billion pound damages from Facebook/Meta. Listen to this episode to learn more about the history and basis of the claim, what is alleged, how it is funded, and what it is like to be a class representative. Related Links: Legal team press release UK Facebook claim website Dr Gormsen profile Facebook Germany decision (Federal Cartel Office) Hosted by: Matthew Hall, partner, McGuireWoods London LLP, London and John Roberti, partner, Allen & Overy, Washington DC

Intro.(1:40) - Start of interview.(2:34) - Dan's "origin story". He grew up in southern California, did his undergrad at Stanford where he studied international relations. This prompted his quest to do something "cross-border." He did an exchange program in his junior year to Santiago, Chile, where he met his now wife and that planted a seed to do something related to Latin America. After law school he went to London where he practiced with Allen & Overy for 4.5 years. In 2004 he came back to Silicon Valley to practice as a corporate associate at WSGR, where he spent 6 years. At that time, there was not much cross-border work with Latin America, although there were partners focused on China, Israel and India, so the international blueprint was there to start building bridges between Silicon Valley and Latin America. Since then, he has developed his practice (passing through Goodwin Procter and Greenberg Traurig) and now at Gunderson Dettmer where about 80% of his practice is focused on Latin America.(5:53) - Dan's description of Gunderson's Latin America practice: "Fundamentally, we're transactional lawyers that do international cross-border work." Their focus is on venture-backed technology-driven, high growth companies.(10:21) - Why he advises his clients to incorporate in the Cayman Islands. "When we advise clients on a choice of a holding company, it comes down to a mix of investor preferences, tax considerations and administrative aspects." For Latin American companies, there are now three preferred choices: Delaware C-corp, a Cayman Islands company or a UK company. Kaszek Ventures was an early advocate for using a Cayman holding company. "I think we're going to see those 3 structures prevail in the market." Three prominent examples with Cayman holding structures: Nubank (the Brazilian neobank that recently IPOed in the US), Cornershop (a Chilean grocery delivery company that was acquired by Uber) and Kavak (a Mexican used-car online marketplace).(17:26) - On the geopolitical tensions between the US and China, and its implications for the startup ecosystem in Latin America. On the rising investments from China in Latin America and the increasing role and scope of the Committee of Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) impacting transactions in the US.(20:39) - On the increasing antitrust pressure from local regulators in Latin America. The example of Cornershop in Mexico and Chile.(23:19) - Dan's overview of entrepreneurship in Latin America. "Brazil is by far the most important market, followed by quite a distant second place from Mexico. Those two markets by themselves dominate the region in terms of capital deployed, number of deals, exits activity, etc." 2021 was a record year for venture activity in the region [$15bn in venture investments]. What's driving this growth? A combination of factors, per Dan: "The pandemic accelerated many changes, all of it boosted by widespread broadband adoption, digitally native people, younger generations, generational shifts in family businesses with decision-makers in their 40s or 30s and a vast under-banked and under-served population." There is also a virtuous cycle with big investors such as Softbank investing in the region ($8bn in two funds focused in Latin America) and other late-stage investors that have increased the cadence and velocity of investments such as Tiger Global. On the corporate governance implications of these investments.(30:22) - On the changing landscape of venture funding  in Latin America: "There is a much richer ecosystem of investors in Latin America, with stronger local investors." The rounds are getting bigger and investments are done at a faster pace. "But the markets will always be cyclical." His take on dual-class shares and other governance structures. "There will be down-rounds or re-caps if we go on down cycles, and these questions may play out in the next decade. We are still in an incipient stage of corporate governance in the region."(39:13) - On SPACs, and how they can impact exit strategies for Latin American companies. "I'm somewhat cautionary and skeptical of this structure, generally." "It doesn't really save that much time, nor much cost." [See Prof. Klausner's latest research on SPACs.](44:20) - On the role of directors, and diversity on boards. What's the status in Latin America? "It's slowly percolating down in Latin America." "Some of the investors are pushing some ESG standards in their investments, but not so much on gender diversity."(48:28) - On the positive impact in the increase of equity compensation and stock options in Latin American startups ("from top to bottom"). This is a sort of "democracy within the cap table." This is a trend that is starting to become more prevalent in the region.(52:15) - Dan favorite books:Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (2008)Historical novels and intrigue, such as Red Notice by Bill Browder (2015)(53:27) - Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them?Steve Bochner (WSGR)(54:36) - Quotes that he thinks of often, or lives his life by:"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." Dr. Seuss.(55:41) - An unusual habit that he loves: He likes to collect scorecards from golf courses, he's been doing it since childhood.(57:56) - The living person he most admires: Barack Obama.Dan Green is a Partner and Co-Chair of the Latin America Practice for Gunderson Dettmer, a prominent international law firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. __ You can follow Evan on social media at:Twitter @evanepsteinLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/ Substack https://evanepstein.substack.com/Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License 

Asia ESG Reporter Siya Kulkarni and Legal Analyst Urmika Tripathi discuss sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) with Pallavi Gopinath Aney, Partner in the International Capital Markets practice and Joint Chair of Allen & Overy's India Group. This podcast focuses on SLB issuances out of India and the behavioural trends that have driven these issuances out of the region. Pallavi provides critical inputs and insights on regulatory drivers, the transaction process, potential innovations in SLB structures and the future of the SLB market in the region.

Many lawyers, young and old, have considered a job as an in-house attorney. What is the allure? Steve Cernak, Partner at Bona Law and previously in-house counsel to General Motors, joins Christina Ma and John Roberti to discuss his career as an in-house attorney and what makes the in-house experience so different. Listen to this episode to learn more about what it's like on the inside. Related Links: Ben Heineman, The General Counsel As Lawyer-Stateman Steven Cernak, Review of Ben Heineman's "The Inside Counsel Revolution" Hosted by: Christina Ma, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and John Roberti, Allen & Overy

In der heutigen Folge des Jura-Karrierepodcasts Irgendwas mit Recht begrüßen wir bereits das zweite Mal Anna Masser. Anna Masser ist Partnerin bei Allen & Overy und spricht in diesem ersten Teils des Schiedsrechts-Spezials, welches Euch in den kommenden Wochen hier erwartet, mit uns über ihre Arbeit als Anwältin und Schiedsrichterin bei einer führenden Großkanzlei. Neben einem Überblick über die kommenden Folgen des Spezials erhaltet Ihr Antworten auf die folgenden Fragen: Was ist so spannend am Schiedsrecht? Wie läuft so ein Schiedsverfahren überhaupt ab? Was sind die Unterschiede zum "normalen" Zivilprozess? Welche Vorteile hat es, seine Streitigkeit vor einem Schiedsgericht zu klären? Viel Spaß!

From crypto enthusiasts to supply chain gurus, it seems everyone is talking about blockchain these days. What makes this technology so potentially impactful, and what does it have to do with antitrust? Thibault Schrepel, author of Blockchain + Antitrust: The Decentralization Formula, joins Sergei Zaslavsky and John Roberti to demystify blockchain, explain the significance of this technology, and discuss why antitrust regulators and practitioners need to take note. Listen to this episode for a clear elucidation of what blockchain is (and even where the name comes from), and how it will impact antitrust enforcement. Related Links: Thibault Shrepel, Blockchain + Antitrust: The Decentralization Formula Blockchain Antitrust (open source academic studies on blockchain and antitrust) Hosted by: John Roberti, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, O'Melveny & Myers

In this episode I speak with David Lucking who is a Partner at Magic Circle law firm Allen & Overy where he was recently named Head of the firm's Global International Capital Markets Group and where his practice focuses on derivatives and structured finance transactions. David's career path embodies the international focus of his practice. He is a graduate of a King's College London, the Sorbonne, and Oxford and is now based in the firm's New York office and is the firm's first US-based Practice Group Head.. He is also the Global Co-Head of the law firm's LGBT+ allies program where he regularly leads initiatives related to workplace diversity. In our conversation we discuss David's day-to-day life as a transactional lawyer and his path to a practice focused on derivatives law; the differences between learning to practice litigation and transactional law in a large law firm setting; his views on the increasing role of remote practice and technology in the legal profession; and the role his own identity plays in his position as a law firm leader. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to sign up for future episodes at www.howilawyer.com or to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, our host, Donna Titley, Talent Development Manager (Asia Pacific), PeerPoint, is joined by Nishilla McKeogh, Graduate Recruitment & Development Manager at Allen & Overy. The graduate recruitment, assessment and selection process can be challenging, daunting and competitive. We will be asking Nishilla to share her views and insights on how you can be successful through the application process, different types of interviews, how to excel in the process and create a good impression.

In this episode, our host, Donna Titley, Talent Development Manager (Asia Pacific), PeerPoint, is joined by Nicole Tang, who recently started her training contract with us at Allen & Overy in Hong Kong. Nicole will take you on her journey as an intern, she will provide her tips and experience on how to get the most out of our vacation scheme and how she earned herself a return offer as a trainee solicitor.

Several countries will soon make it mandatory for large companies and asset managers to calculate and publicly report their climate-related risks. It's a complex accounting challenge and many businesses aren't fully prepared. The governments of the U.K., New Zealand, Hong Kong and Switzerland, as well as the G7 group of nations, are among those backing mandatory reporting under the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, or TCFD, framework. The push towards compulsory TCFD reporting will put pressure on banks, businesses and asset managers that have yet to embrace such disclosure. A big reason why many companies struggle with TCFD implementation is because it's hard to collect, collate and analyze detailed emissions-related data in all areas of their operations. Companies also need to train their employees on technical aspects of reporting under the framework. Above all, TCFD implementation must be roundly embraced and instilled — all the way from the C-suite to product and client-teams — and that takes time. In this episode, we speak to Thora Frost, senior manager of green finance at the Carbon Trust, a London-based consulting firm that works on climate change and sustainability issues. And we interview Matthew Townsend, partner at U.K. law firm Allen & Overy. "You have a blizzard of regulation and policy coming down the line, certainly over the next five years, and I don't see it letting up in many jurisdictions," Townsend says. Photo credit: Getty Images

I spoke with Catie Butt, an Executive Director with A&O Consulting, which is a division within Allen & Overy that advises corporate legal teams in a number of areas including business and legal function transformation. We discussed the genesis of the firm's Advanced Delivery & Solutions team, how it collaborates with the firm's practicing lawyers, and the challenges that the legal industry is likely to face in 2021 and beyond.

I spoke with Catie Butt, an Executive Director with A&O Consulting, which is a division within Allen & Overy that advises corporate legal teams in a number of areas including business and legal function transformation. We discussed the genesis of the firm's Advanced Delivery & Solutions team, how it collaborates with the firm's practicing lawyers, and the challenges that the legal industry is likely to face in 2021 and beyond.

Do you have the ambition to achieve extraordinary success in recruitment? Whether you're a recruiter building a desk, a manager building a team, or a director building a company, you'll get tremendous value from my interview with Jonathan Field. Jonathan is the Joint Group CEO of Shilton Sharpe Quarry (SSQ), a leading international legal recruitment business headquartered in London. SSQ has 100 employees and was recently ranked the UK's #1 Professional Services Recruiter by the Recruiter Magazine. With humility and candour, Jonathan shared his own journey from lawyer to recruiter and ultimately to the C-suite. We also discussed hiring, managing and retaining top performers, and what distinguishes a really good recruiter from an exceptional one.  Plus Jonathan revealed how to “step up your game” and become a trusted advisor to your clients. Episode Outline and Highlights [1:41] Jonathan's story: transition from being a lawyer to falling in love with recruitment and becoming a successful recruiter. [13:24] Key factors to Jonathan's quick progression in the recruitment industry. [18:30] Transitioning from 100% fee earner to Joint Group CEO. [27:31] Learnings and takeaways from ‘thousands' of mistakes as CEO. [34:36] When hiring internal talent, what should you look for in a good recruiter? [48:55] Engaging your team and bringing out the best in them.  Rapid Career Progression  Jonathan's career has involved some key transitions.  Having been a qualified lawyer at a prestigious firm, he fell in love with recruitment and joined SSQ in 2007.  Later he transitioned from being a 100% fee earner to Joint CEO in 2019. He describes how a combination of factors enabled him to progress quickly, including hard work, timing and an element of luck.  Jonathan admitted that transitioning to the Joint CEO role was especially challenging. He shared some of the mistakes he made when he stepped up to the C-suite, and what he learned from them.  For example, at first he tried to do everything himself instead of leveraging his very capable management team. Once he learned to let go, he got better results with less stress. Hiring Recruiters - What Should You Look For? With a team of excellent recruiters, SSQ recently ranked as the UK's no.1 Professional Services Recruiter by the Recruiter Magazine. So I asked Jonathan what we should be looking for when hiring internally? He stated a number of mandatory criteria, such as: Given that recruitment is a sales job, you should look for hunger, ambition, and drive. Good foundations such as work ethic and sales ability. Test for cultural fit. Building a High Performing Team with Multiple 7-Figure Billers Jonathan shared that SSQ has multiple consultants billing seven figures. So what distinguishes a really good recruiter from an exceptional one? For Jonathan, there is a thin line between a really good recruiter and an excellent, brilliant recruiter. He said, “The bit that will then separate good recruiters from brilliant recruiters is their ability to be more than just recruiters.”  He then further elaborated, “They have the ability to digest, organize and synthesize information that allows them to be more than just transactional recruiters for their clients. And the way for you to get the best client relationships and get the highest value of work, and really become advisors to your clients is to make sure that you're doing more than just bringing them good people. You're offering them analysis on the market and you're a reservoir of information on your particular market and that you can talk coherently and credibly and with insight into what's going on.”  To simplify the secret to their firm's success, the advice he would give is to “just become the expert in what you do.” How to Retain Top Talent Having brilliant recruiters can be challenging, but engaging and retaining these top talents can also present some difficulties especially in a competitive market. So, how does SSQ do it? As Joint CEO, Jonathan found that what works best for them are the following: Offering a variety of tasks and providing opportunities to develop and take on more responsibilities, such as running a team.  Incentives such as having equity within the local business and bonuses tied into the performance of the group. Hear from Jonathan how this works for them and see how it can also be applied in your current set-up. Jonathan Field Bio and Contact Info Jonathan is the Joint Group CEO of SSQ - a leading international legal recruitment business headquartered in London with offices in Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dubai, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. Launched in 2003, SSQ has c.100 employees and was recently ranked the UK#'s #1 Professional Services Recruiter by the Recruiter Magazine. Born and raised in London, Jonathan trained and qualified as a lawyer in 2006 before leaving the law firm Allen & Overy to join SSQ in 2007. For several years, he was responsible for running part of the London business. He was later appointed Joint Group CEO in 2019 following a management buyout/group re-organisation.  Jonathan still splits his time between running the business and advising the world's top law firms on their most senior and strategic lateral hiring Jonathan on LinkedIn SSQ website link SSQ on Twitter @SSQlegal  SSQ on Youtube  SSQ on Instagram  People and Resources Mentioned Greg Savage on LinkedIn Connect with Mark Whitby Get your FREE 30-minute strategy call Mark on LinkedIn Mark on Twitter: @MarkWhitby Mark on Facebook Mark on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach Related Podcast You Might Enjoy TRR#64  The Recruiter Roadmap to Recovery: How to Thrive in a Post-Pandemic World, with Greg Savage TRR#1 The Future of Recruitment: Strategies To Stay Relevant and Effective, with Greg Savage  Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter  

Stell dir vor: 28 Jahre jung und schon ganze zwei Jahre Berufserfahrung als Rechtsanwältin in einer Großkanzlei! Laura Reuther ist Associate bei Allen & Overy und arbeitet dort im Bereich Corporate. Besonders haben es ihr Private Equity Transaktionen angetan. Genau darüber spricht Moritz mit ihr in der heutigen Episode  - aber nicht nur! Denn Laura verfügt über eine äußerst spannende Vita. So hat sie u.a. bereits in New York gearbeitet, war Leistungsschwimmerin und war während ihrer juristischen Ausbildung immer fokussiert unterwegs. Außerdem hat Laura ein paar tolle Tipps für Deine Examensvorbereitung parat! Also, reinhören!   Du bist noch nicht bei clavisto? Als exzellente Nachwuchsjurist*in bist Du bei uns genau richtig! Unser Talentprogramm bietet Dir vielfältige Karrierechancen, kostenlose Förderleistungen und begleitet Dich auf Deinem Weg in eine Top-Kanzlei. www.clavisto.de

In this special episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, brought to you in collaboration with principal partner Taylor Root, Lawyers Weekly speaks to finalists for the Banking & Finance category at the 2021 30 Under 30 Awards. Host Jerome Doraisamy and Taylor Root partner Hayden Gordine are joined by Clifford Chance senior associate Victor Greenstreet and Allen & Overy lawyer Julia Burvill to discuss the myriad issues and challenges that banking and finance lawyers have faced in the age of coronavirus and the actions the pair have taken in the wake of the pandemic to successfully serve clients and stand out from their peers. The quartet also discuss looming opportunities for lawyers in this space to both assist clients and progress their careers, goals for the finalists moving into a post-pandemic market, and advice they would offer to aspiring banking and finance lawyers coming through the ranks. If you like this episode, show your support by rating us or leaving a review on Apple Podcasts (The Lawyers Weekly Show) and by following Lawyers Weekly on social media: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you have any questions about what you heard today, any topics of interest you have in mind, or if you'd like to lend your voice to the show, email editor@lawyersweekly.com.au for more insights!

Generics and biosimilars are an important part of the pharmaceutical landscape in Europe. What are the competition law issues faced by suppliers of those products? Adrian van den Hoven, Director General of trade association Medicines for Europe, joins John Roberti and Matthew Hall to discuss the key concerns of generic and biosimilar suppliers and also the dramatic impact of COVID-19 on them. Listen to this episode to learn more about the application of competition law to pharmaceuticals and the background to the 2020 comfort letter granted by the European Commission at the request of Medicines for Europe. Related Links: Medicines for Europe White Paper on Barriers to Generic and Biosimilar Market Entry Medicines for Europe Paper on Patent Linkage Medicines for Europe Paper on Divisional Patents Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Matthew Hall, Partner, McGuireWoods London LLP

It was recently announced that Andrew Ballheimer, who retired last October as global managing partner at Magic Circle law firm Allen & Overy, one of the largest law firms in the world, has joined the board of directors of the managed services company Factor, which spun off in 2019 from the alternative legal services provider Axiom.   Some are saying the move represents a bridge between traditional law firms and new forms of legal services delivery, and that it signals a future in which law firms and ALSPs more commonly work together to better serve their clients.  Andrew Ballheimer joins us on today’s LawNext to discuss this news, together with Chris DeConti, head of strategy at Factor and formerly executive vice president at Axiom. They discuss the significance of Ballheimer’s move and how they believe partnerships between law firms and ALSPs can benefit clients. They also share their thoughts on innovation in the legal industry, and on what the future holds for firms such as Allen & Overy and companies such as Factor. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out.  Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies.  Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about.  A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

In this episode, Camilla Uppal speaks with Kalila Bolton. Kalila is Legal & Ops lead at Lawya, a legal tech company, and forged a career in legal tech after qualifying as a solicitor at Allen & Overy. Kalila explains how to go about pursuing a career in legal tech, what skills are required for a career in legal tech, and how you can get involved with Lawya! Apply to be a Lawya Legal Contributor:  https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2458033031/   If you have any questions about being a Contributor, you can email Kalila at hiring@lawya.com   You can connect with Kalila on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalila-bolton-9b26028b/    Check out Lawya's new tool that they have recently launched called ‘RentStich'. This tool may be of help to our student listeners who are also tenants!   Thank you for listening and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and share this episode with anyone who may find it helpful! Hosted by Camilla Uppal, Produced by Nathan Gore

Im Interview mit Anna Masser, Partnerin bei Allen & Overy in Frankfurt. Wir sprechen darüber, warum das Jurastudium zunächst ihre zweite Wahl war, sich jedoch anschließend als sehr bereichernde Erfahrung auszahlte. Was hat dies mit ihrer Teilnahme am Willem C. Vis Moot Court zu tun? Inwieweit zahlt es sich aus, im Anschluss als Coach eines Moot Court Teams tätig zu sein? Hört, wie sie im Anschluss mehrer Jahre als Schiedrechtlerin in der Schweiz arbeitete und wie die dortige Kanzleimentalität womöglich von der deutschen abweicht. Schließlich gehen wir auf den Reiz von internationalen Schiedsverfahren ein und beleuchten, wie Ihr eine juristischen Talente in Annas Team einbringen könnt. Abschließend sprechen wir über Annas Perspektive auf das Thema Diversity und was es in diesem Bereich bei vielen Kanzleien noch zu tun gibt. Viel Spaß!

In January 2020, Axiom Managed Services, one of two companies spun off in 2019 from alternative legal services provider Axiom, rebranded as Factor, a move the company characterized as a relaunch, and named a new CEO, Varun Mehta, a veteran of the legal tech industry who had previously helped found the e-discovery managed services firm The Clutch Group. It has been a year of challenges and opportunities for Factor, an ALSP that describes itself as delivering complex legal work at scale. While Mehta could never have anticipated that he was taking the helm in a year that would be defined by a global pandemic, it was also a year in which the company received an investment it characterized as one of the largest in the global legal solutions market, built out a powerhouse management team, and partnered with major law firm Allen & Overy to provide LIBOR remediation. This week on LawNext, Mehta joins host Bob Ambrogi to reflect on his first year as CEO and the company's progress so far, as well as to share his vision for what lies ahead for Factor and for the managed services industry more broadly. Thank You To Our Sponsors This episode of LawNext is generously made possible by our sponsors. We appreciate their support and hope you will check them out. Paradigm, home to the practice management platforms PracticePanther, Bill4Time, and MerusCase, and e-payments platform Headnote. XIRA.com, where clients find, book and meet with attorneys; and where attorneys get free, fully integrated practice management software. Everlaw, the cloud-based ediscovery platform for law firms, corporations, and government agencies. TrustBooks, the only standalone accounting product designed 100 percent for attorneys and law firms. Law Insider, producer of the show Contract Teardown, where they analyze the contracts that others are talking about. A reminder that we are on Patreon. Subscribe to our page to be able to access show transcripts, or to submit a question for our guests.

Brazilian competition law and enforcement regime is among the most active ones around the world, with a well-recognized cartel program and efforts to advocate and develop its law. How does the Brazilian system work and what are the most important elements in Brazil's competition enforcement? The Honorable Commissioner Luiz Hoffmann of Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) speaks with John Roberti and Anora Wang on the structure and progress of Brazil’s competition enforcement agency. Listen to this episode to learn about one of the most exciting competition jurisdictions. Related Links: Commissioner Luiz Hoffmann, "Hipster Antitrust and the Brazilian Legal System" (in English, published by IBRAC) Commissioner Luiz Hoffmann, contributions to the OECD 2020 Global Forum on Competition regarding abuse of dominance in digital markets (in English) Hosted by: Anora Wang, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and John Roberti, Allen & Overy  

Antitrust is usually focused on consumers, but increasingly, effects of competition on workers have been a focus of scholarship, policy, and enforcement. What is behind the growing prominence of labor antitrust, and what can we expect going forward? Hiba Hafiz, a professor at BC Law, joins Sergei Zaslavsky and John Roberti to discuss how labor antitrust applies in different contexts and the tensions courts are grappling with in applying consumer-focused antitrust doctrine to cases involving workers. Listen to this episode for an engaging introduction to this important topic. Hiba Hafiz, Labor's Antitrust Paradox  Todd v. Exxon Corporation  DOJ and FTC 2016 Antitrust Guidance for HR Professionals  Hosted by: John Roberti, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, O'Melveny & Myers

Marketing in de advocatuur: twintig jaar geleden nog verboden, vandaag op Tiktok en inspiratie uit Silicon Valley. De advocatuur lijkt een bastion waar innovatie en marketing een ondergeschikte rol speelt. In de praktijk zien wij veel verandering en mooie kansen voor advocatenkantoren om meer met marketing te doen. HelloMaaS CEO, Louise Doorn, spreekt openhartig met Ellen Croes, Head of Strategy/a.i., Head of Business Development & Marketing bij Allen & Overy Nederland. Allen & Overy is wereldwijd een van de meest toonaangevende advocatenkantoren en opereert in 31 landen. Een strategisch gesprek over freelance platformen voor advocaten. Over marktplaatsen waar je direct juridische documentatie kan downloaden. En hoe deze innovaties het team bij Allen & Overy dwingt hun kennis en kunde, meer dan ooit, als Unique Selling Points te positioneren. In Ellen’s team werkt marketing en business development nauw samen. Enerzijds voor praktische zaken als event organisatie en webinars. Nu ook steeds meer om online zichtbaarheid van medewerkers en hun “thought leadership” te vergroten. Leuke inside: hun inspo sessies zijn inclusief experts die vertellen over bijv. de combi van geluid en branding. Zal Allen & Overy ook op Tiktok aanwezig zijn, zoals een Nederlandse advocaat bij een boutique kantoor met maar liefst 55k followers? Luister nu naar een nieuwe HelloMasters. www.hellomaas.com

Although there is little question as to the need for affordable, accessible, and high-quality pharmaceuticals, there is immense disagreement as to how best to achieve that end. What are the key issues facing pharmaceutical antitrust enforcement today? Michael Kades, Director of Markets and Competition Policy for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, joins Christina Ma and John Roberti to discuss the current state of pay-for-delay, the FTC's Daraprim case, FTC restitution before SCOTUS, and biologics. Listen to this episode for a quick primer on things to pass and things to come in pharmaceutical antitrust enforcement. Related Links: https://equitablegrowth.org/competitive-edge-underestimating-the-cost-of-underenforcing-u-s-antitrust-laws/ https://equitablegrowth.org/congress-adopts-historic-prescription-drug-pricing-reform/ https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/2020.01.27_daraprim_complaint_final_redacted.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-825/126165/20191219140044609_No.%2019-__%20PetitionForAWritOfCertiorari%20and%20Appendix%20FTC%20v.%20Credit%20Bureau%20Center.pdf Hosted by: Christina Ma, Associate, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz and John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy

Privacy and competition both have been hot subjects, especially when discussing the new digital economy. But will the two doctrines inevitably converge, or are they in fundamental tension with each other? FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips joins Sergei Zaslavsky and John Roberti to discuss this timely subject and share his views on when privacy should (and should not) play a role in antitrust analysis. Listen to this episode for Commissioner Phillips' take on privacy considerations in merger review, differences between privacy and price competition, federal privacy legislation, and more. Related Links: Commissioner Phillips' January 30, 2020 Speech - "Should We Block This Merger? Some Thoughts on Converging Antitrust and Privacy" Hosted by: John Roberti, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, O'Melveny & Myers

In this episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, Meredith Campion from Allen & Overy unpacks the interest findings out of the firm's recent report charting the impact of COVID-19 on mergers and acquisitions. Meredith joins host Jerome Doraisamy to take a closer look at the changes in volume and value of M&A deals in the wake of the pandemic, the sectors that have been most significantly affected, and the creative methods that buyers and sellers are using to progress deals under current restrictions. They also discuss why M&A has been so susceptible to the impacts of the coronavirus, how Australian M&A has fared relative to the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, and the positive developments that have come out of the pandemic. If you like this episode, show your support by rating us or leaving a review on Apple Podcasts (The Lawyers Weekly Show) and by following Lawyers Weekly on social media: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you have any questions about what you heard today, any topics of interest you have in mind, or if you'd like to lend your voice to the show, email editor@lawyersweekly.com.au for more insights!

The One Take Show is honored to host Mr. Pranay Lekhi. Pranay is a Legal Advisor to Allen & Overy; LLM candidate, Cambridge University. In this episode, Pranay talks about his journey through Law School, his experience with the LLM Application process, and his strategy for Vacation Schemes, which can be instrumental for finding opportunities in the leading International Law Firms.

Merger trials are always fascinating, and Sprint-T-Mobile was a particularly interesting and important case. How did the merging parties rebut the Government's case and convince the district court to allow the merger to proceed? Two lawyers who played a key part in engineering the defense, George Cary and Lindy Bernhardt from Cleary Gottlieb, join hosts John Roberti and Sergei Zaslavsky to provide an insider's view of this merger defense. Listen to this episode to learn about how to defend a merger when the Government has the structural presumption on its side. Related Links: Sprint - T-Mobile merger district court opinion Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, Counsel, O'Melveny & Myers

Career progression meets career flexibility in a sector known for putting in more time – the legal sector. Alison Pullen, one of the Heads of HR at Allen & Overy, an international law firm, talks about how companies can sometimes get stuck doing things the old way because it’s worked. She explains how being open and different about ways of working can make companies more market leading, and retain and attract top talent. During her 20-year tenure at Allen & Overy, Alison shared a role and also managed a job share.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing the world and responses are needed. Is antitrust/competition law part of the problem or can it be part of the solution as companies and governments react? Emma Cochrane of law firm Linklaters in London joins Matthew Hall and John Roberti to discuss the application of EU and UK competition, merger control and State aid law to climate change both now and in the future. Listen to this episode to learn more about the role that competition law may play in driving measures to slow climate change. Related Links: Episode 16 of Our Curious Amalgam, considering the issue under US law Article on law and social responsibility from New York Law Journal Article on Climate Change, Sustainability and Competition Speech by European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager Hosted by: Matthew Hall, McGuireWoods London LLP, London, UK and John Roberti, Allen & Overy, Washington, D.C.

My guest this week is a performance coach who specialises in supporting leaders to build personal resilience.  For the last fifteen years he has worked at the interface of leadership and wellbeing with some of the biggest brands in the world. His passion is to support leaders to play the ‘inner game’ of life better, so it enables them to lead themselves, their teams and their families.  At this time of crisis, I think we might all learn a few things so let’s give a warm Speaking Business welcome to Charlie Cannon. Bio Charlie Cannon – Helping leaders, teams and organisations build resilience so that they can embrace change and sustain performance in a disruptive and uncertain world. Charlie is a much sought after performance enhancement coach who has helped leaders, teams and global organisations build resilience thus enabling them not only to embrace change in an uncertain disruptive world, but able to sustain high levels of performance and thrive no matter what the world throws at them. For the last fifteen years he has worked as a leadership development consultant and coach with some of the most well known brands in the world, including, HSBC, PepsiCo, Tesco, BP, Roche, Ebay, Airbus, The Metropolitan Police, Deloitte, Allen & Overy, Mars, Unilever, Uber, Manchester City Football club, The Soho House Group, Santander, Marks & Spencer and Amazon. In Charlie’s live events and trainings he draws upon his rich life experience and combines this with cutting edge research from science and psychology to give them tools and techniques that they can act upon immediately that will catalyse their performance and well-being. Prior to working in business Charlie was a successful health and fitness coach, where at one point he was training an Oscar winning actor and actress. What he observed, was that most of his clients were busy, time poor, stressed and burnt out executives who wanted to increase their energy and manage stress better. This concerned him. His passion for helping people build resilience stems from not just working with all these stressed out executives, but also his own story in not becoming the professional sportsman he had dreamed of being, due to struggling to be at his best when it counted.And, perhaps more tellingly, he knows first-hand what it takes to recover from a near death experience that left him hospitalised and his sister moments away from dying. At 21 he was involved in a traumatic car accident with his sister who almost died. This incident eventually inspired his research into resilience and overcoming adversity. Charlie played rugby for England, West of England hockey and county cricket as a school-boy, but he struggled to perform under pressure, which has showed him the importance of developing a growth mindset and building mental toughness. Recorded on: 7th April 2020  Links: More about Charlie Cannon More about Maria Franzoni Ltd Connect with Maria on Linkedin Connect with Maria on FaceBook To book any of the speakers featured on the Speaking Business podcast, click here Listen here: Libsyn  Itunes  Soundcloud Stitcher Spotify  

In recent years, the consumer welfare standard has been heavily criticized by some as too weak or simply inadequate to address the complex antitrust issues raised by the modern economy. But what alternatives exist? Tim Wu, author of The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age and Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia Law School, joins Christina Ma and John Roberti to discuss what hipster antitrust is and its potential for reshaping how we think about the consumer welfare standard or replacing it. Listen to this episode if you want to think critically about the changes needed, if any, to antitrust policy. Related Links: https://www.law.columbia.edu/news/2018/11/tim-wu-curse-of-bigness-antitrust https://www.wired.com/story/tim-wu-says-us-must-enforce-antitrust-laws/ Hosted by: Christina Ma, Associate, Wachtell Lipton and John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy

The pricing of pharmaceuticals, and in particular whether prices are "too high" or “excessive”, is a contentious topic in the EU, as elsewhere. What is "excessive" in this context and what other antitrust arguments are used in this key sector? Paul Csiszar, Director, European Commission, DG Competition and Bill Batchelor, Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP join Matthew Hall and John Roberti to discuss recent cases and policy directions, including several cases based on allegations of abuse of dominance by pharmaceutical companies. Listen to this episode to learn more about how EU competition/antitrust law can be one part of the toolbox available to investigate and deal with the issue of excessive pricing in pharmaceuticals. Related Links: European Commission opens formal investigation into Aspen Pharma's pricing practices for cancer medicines UK Competition and Markets Authority: Phenytoin sodium capsules: suspected unfair pricing European Court of Justice: Case C-307/18 Generics (UK) and Others UK Competition and Markets Authority: Remicade: alleged abusive discount scheme Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy, LLP and Matthew Hall, Partner, McGuireWoods London LLP

Just across our Northern Border lies over 500,000 square miles of Arctic tundra and a very robust antitrust regime equipped to weather the varied challenges facing antitrust practitioners today. But what are the difference with the U.S. antitrust laws and enforcement regime? Huy Do, Partner at Fasken and Chair of the Competition Law Section of the Canadian Bar Association, walks us through five key differences between U.S. and Canadian antitrust law and jurisprudence. Listen to this episode if you want to learn more about the nuances in practicing cross-border North American competition law. Related Links: Doing Business in Canada: Competition Act and Law in Canada Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Christina Ma, Associate, Wachtell Lipton

In Europe, the right to privacy is considered a basic and fundamental human right, and allows individuals to request that personal data about themselves be erased or deleted - what has been termed the “right to be forgotten.” How do European privacy rights compare with American ones, and will there ever be an American “right to be forgotten” similar to the one in Europe? Data protection law experts Melanie Teplinsky and Mehboob Dossa join Kayla Odom and John Roberti to discuss how this right is being exercised in the EU and to explore from both American and European perspectives how the individual’s right to privacy can be balanced with the public’s right to access. Listen to this episode to learn more about how the principles of privacy law differ across the Atlantic, and how they can be harmonized. Related Links: EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), Article 17, Right to Erasure (‘Right to be Forgotten’) (effective May 2018) Court of Justice of the European Union, Press Release No. 112/19, Google LLC v. Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL) (Sept. 24, 2019) Court of Justice of the European Union, Press Release No. 128/19, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Limited (Oct. 3, 2019) U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (“COPPA”) California “Eraser Button Law” (SB 586) (effective January 1, 2015) California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Kayla Odom, Associate, Freitas & Weinberg

The relationship between Big Data and Antitrust has been a hot topic recently. In this episode, University of Florida Law Professor and White & Case Senior Advisor Daniel Sokol talks with hosts John Roberti and Sergei Zaslavsky about this important subject, combining his genuine expertise, eclectic erudition, and unique panache. Any Big Data podcast can provide an explanation of the four Vs and network effects; this one mixes in Fiddler on the Roof, Woody Allen, Werner Herzog, and Joseph Schumpeter's thesis advisor. Listen to this episode for an engaging conversation that is educational and entertaining in equal measure. Related Links: The Four Vs of Big Data Daniel Sokol and Roisin Comerford, Antitrust and Regulating Big Data Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, Counsel, O'Melveny & Myers

On January 10, the Federal Trade Commissions and the Department of Justice released Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines. In this Breaking News Special, ABA Antitrust Law Section Mergers Committee Co-Chairs Michael Keeley and Joanna Tsai join hosts John Roberti and Sergei Zaslavsky to share their initial reactions to the Guidelines. Listen to this episode to learn about vertical theories of harm, quasi safe harbors, and EDM (hint - it's not electronic dance music). Related Links: Draft Vertical Merger Guidelines Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, Counsel, O'Melveny & Myers

The European Commission has dramatically increased its level of competition law enforcement against vertical agreements. Distribution agreements have in particular been in the spotlight, but other arrangements such as licensing are also at risk. The focus is on ensuring that manufacturers and licensors do not unreasonably ban or restrict online selling and is replicated at national level in the EU. Jennifer Marsh, a London-based partner with law firm K&L Gates discusses the recent cases and their implications with Matthew Hall of McGuireWoods and John Roberti of Allen & Overy. Hosted by: Matthew Hall of McGuireWoods and John Roberti of Allen & Overy

Whether antitrust enforcement against Big Tech is sufficient has been a hot topic in the antitrust world and on Capitol Hill. In this episode, Hal Varian, an industrial organization and information economics scholar and the Chief Economist at Google, speaks with John Roberti and Sergei Zaslavsky about popular attitudes toward Big Tech, the evidence that populist critics of Big Tech may be overlooking, and what historical trends can tell us about the current state of competition in the tech sector. Listen to this episode for a discussion of Big Tech that touches on everything from entry conditions to data portability to coffee in government meetings. Related Links: List of Alphabet acquisitions Data Transfer Project Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, Counsel, O'Melveny & Myers

In our “Three to Keep, Three to Change” series, we ask antitrust thought leaders a simple yet provocative question. What three things do you like about antitrust law and would keep, and what three things would you change? In this episode, law and economics scholar and former FTC Commissioner Josh Wright speaks with John Roberti and Sergei Zaslavsky about independent economic analysis at the FTC, merger retrospectives, the value of dissents, the use of presumptions in merger cases, and more. Listen to this episode for an entertaining and wide-ranging discussion of everything from agency clearance battles to wrestling holds. Related Links: Edith Ramirez Speech on FTC Merger Retrospectives Josh Wright Ardagh Dissent Josh Wright Dollar Tree Dissent Hosted by: John Roberti, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, O'Melveny & Myers

In criminal cartel actions, individual executives face prosecution and potential jail time. Defending whose life and liberty are at stake in these matters creates unique challenges. Former prosecutor Doug Tween speaks with John Roberti and Wendy Huang Waszmer about the strategy and psychology necessary to defend individual defendants when everything in their lives is in jeopardy. Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Wendy Huang Waszmer, Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Where do plaintiffs get the information they put into their pleadings? Melinda Coolidge, a leading lawyer who represents plaintiffs, will explain how she researches, develops and diligences antitrust complaints. Private enforcement plays an important role in antitrust law, and private enforcement starts with the complaint. Our guest is leading plaintiffs’ lawyer Melinda Coolidge, who has developed a number of complaints. In this episode, Melinda talks with John Roberti and Sergei Zaslavsky about how she researches, develops and diligences antitrust complaints. Listen to this episode to learn where plaintiffs get the information they put into their pleadings (hint: if a press release announces you plan to fix prices, Melinda will probably find it). Related Links: Chinese Vitamin C Antitrust Litigation  Research on Effects of Twombly and Iqbal  Hosted by: John Roberti, Partner, Allen & Overy and Sergei Zaslavsky, Counsel, O'Melveny & Myers

Women make up 46% of the workforce in financial services but only 15% are in executive positions. How much does the under representation of women at senior level in the industry impact profitability? Jennifer Cresswell, PSL Counsel at Allen & Overy and Lisa Cleary of ICMA discuss engagement with the ICMA Women’s Network as a means to advance the diversity agenda in capital markets.

We speak with Shruti about working at Allen & Overy and setting up Fuse.Fuse was created to give A&O lawyers and clients opportunities to better understand the use of technology that could benefit them. For the Fuse cohort, it is designed to give them the resources and contacts to develop their products successfully and on an accelerated track, supported through the vast network of A&O lawyers.

In September 2017, venerable Magic Circle law firm Allen & Overy launched Fuse, setting aside a portion of its London office for a collaborative innovation space to develop and test new legal technologies, and it named lawyer Shruti Ajitsaria to head the project. On this episode of LawNext, Ajitsaria joins host Bob Ambrogi to discuss why Allen & Overy started Fuse, explain what it does, and describe its work to date. Ajitsaria says Fuse is not an incubator, per se, but a collaborative technology innovation space that gives legal technology companies the opportunity to work directly with Allen & Overy’s lawyers and clients. It’s a win-win, she says. Companies get the chance to test and refine their products, while the firm’s lawyers get to better understand how technology can help them in their own practices. Ajitsaria was a credit-derivatives lawyer dabbling in angel investing when a pitch from a legal technology startup sparked her interest in legal technology. While on maternity leave, she attended Google Campus’ Startup School, and when she returned to work, suggested and then spearheaded the development of Fuse. Fuse differs from other incubators in that it accepts companies that are beyond early stage. Participants in the current cohort include AI platforms Kira Systems and Neota Logic. Another participant, Bloomsbury AI, was acquired in July by Facebook. Allen & Overy so much liked the first company it brought into Fuse, fintech company Nivaura, that it made an equity investment in it. Comment on this show: Record a voice comment on your mobile phone and send it to info@lawnext.com.

We catch up with Law Society social mobility ambassador Kawsar Zaman, an associate at Allen & Overy.

Caroline Flanagan is the founder of Babyproof Your Life – a niche coaching service that trains and prepares young professionals for the marathon of working parenthood. In this episode Caroline talks about  Her advice to someone who doesn’t have children yet but is planning to have children in the future The right time in a relationship to have children The advice she has for parents where both couples are working The biggest mistakes couples make when juggling work and kids What she would say to someone who has children and this is putting pressure on their relationship   Caroline Flanagan   ABOUT CAROLINE An ex-City lawyer with 9 years’ experience at 2 of the world’s largest global law firms. She is now an author, a qualified coach and  a speaker on Work Life Balance and Imposter Syndrome. Caroline works with individuals from all over the world, and with some of the world’s largest organisations including Morgan Stanley, Shell, Accenture and Google. She has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Sunday Times Legal Supplement, Grazia and Marie Claire. Babyproof Coach Caroline qualified as a professional Coach in 2006. Over the last ten years Caroline has coached both men and women through a range of career and life challenges including maternity. She has worked with clients from all over the world, including America, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, India, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Australia and the UK and is known to her community as The Babyproof Coach.  Background Caroline read History at Cambridge University before attending the College of Law, London and gaining her Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice in 1997. She spent eight years working in the City of London as an international finance lawyer at two of the world’s largest global law firms, Allen & Overy, LLP and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, LLP.  Mother of 4 Caroline is a working mother of four young boys, rising to the challenge of working parenthood every day, and is a passionate advocate of having and enjoying it all.   Connect with Caroline Web: http://www.babyproofyourlife.com Email: caroline@babyproofyourlife.com Twitter: Babyproof_Coach Linkedin: thebabyproofcoach Instagram: thebabyproofcoach Facebook: BabyProof Your Career    If you have enjoyed this show then please leave a review.  How to leave an iTunes rating or review for a podcast from your iPhone or iPad Itunes link - http://apple.co/2xj5yud Launch Apple's Podcast app. Tap the Search tab. Enter the name of the podcast you want to rate or review. Tap the blue Search key at the bottom right. Tap the album art for the podcast. Tap the Reviews tab. Tap Write a Review at the bottom. ABOUT WENDY CAPEWELL Wendy is a Relationship Coach, Public Speaker and Author. She helps people  improve their confidence, and self- esteem and communication skills which in turn improves their personal and professional relationships. Connect with Wendy Here...... Facebook - CLICK HERE Linked in - CLICK HERE Twitter Account - CLICK HERE Website – www.yourrelationshipspecialist.co.uk Book –‘From Surviving to Thriving in a Romantic Relationship’- Link to Amazon Email – wendy@yourrelationshipspecialist.co.uk Email me if you would like to receive my newsletter. which contains my latest news, articles and special offers.    

Shruti Ajitsaria is the head of global law firm Allen & Overy technology innovation space Fuse. A former derivatives lawyer she is also an angel investor in tech and non tech start ups, a TEDx speaker, alumni of Google Start Up Campus and a mentor with Techstars. ​We talk about the difference between an incubator and Fuse, the type of programs they run, its evolution and how her third maternity leave pushed her to accept new challenges including applying to be a deputy High Court Judge.  In a very entertaining conversation she reveals how she started angel investing and how her journey with Fuse has taken her outside the scope of normal legal practice and how Allen & Overy is innovating in many areas opening up innovation to everyone within the firm.   

Jo talks with Rachel Paris, Founder of The Blockchain Boutique a legal practice specialising in blockchain and crypto which will launch in 2018. Rachel is a former partner at NZ law firm Bell Gully, with experience at leading London law firms Allen & Overy and Olswang. She has 15 years' experience advising blue-chip financial institutions, private equity funds, trustees and corporates on a range of lending and capital markets transactions. Rachel founded Bell Gully's FinTech team and has advised NZ's leading blockchain businesses on transactional and compliance-related matters. Ranked by legal directories, including Chambers Asia-Pacific 2018 and The Legal 500, as a leading/recommended lawyer in both banking and finance and investment funds. You can email Rachel - Rachel@theblockchainboutique.io Jo Brothers interviews phenomenal women in the Giant Sisters podcast series. We are celebrating phenomenal women as we celebrate the 125th anniversary of women's suffrage in New Zealand.

Listen to this episode if you’re interested in taking control of your career and moving away from outdated models. Because doing so might not necessarily mean breaking from the big law establishment. In today’s episode of Beyond Billables, we’re talking with Richard Punt who clearly articulates why this might be the case. Richard is the CEO of Allen & Overy’s Peerpoint consulting platform, where he focuses on businesses development and international expansion. Before Allen & Overy, Richard was a managing partner with Deloitte and a strategy consultant with extensive experience in the development and execution of strategy and organisation design. And with such a wealth of experience, he’s a great person to report from the front lines of a changing industry. Listen to this episode to hear how Allen & Overy is adapting to a changing landscape, as well as Richard’s take on the future of legal practice, plus all this too: What Peerpoint is and why it matters Richard’s take on where legal tech is headed The impetus for A&O’s more flexible approach The type of lawyers ideal for Peerpoint How mainstream firms can restructure their approaches The benefit of controlling one’s schedule and workflow Peerpoint’s selection criteria Tectonic mindset shifts within the legal industry Key abilities that future lawyers will need Where the legal services market is going How big international law firms are evolving   Links: LinkedIn The Contemporary Art Society Peerpoint

In episode 50 of the Graduate Job Podcast, I am joined by Hannah Salton, Graduate Recruitment Manager at international law firm Allen and Overy. In this half hour we explore the different options available to graduates at Allen & Overy, from their sought after training contracts, to their vacation schemes and open days. We delve into the application process for the training contracts, the different methods of entry, what they look for from candidates and how to ensure you stand out throughout the application process. We also explore the vacation schemes in detail and look at whether this is really the easy way in for a career in law. You might be surprised at some of the answers.  If you’ve ever thought about a legal career, then this is definitely the episode for you. Even if working for a law firm has never crossed your mind, keep listening to understand why over half of the graduates that Allen and Overy take on didn’t study law at university. As always, all links to everything we discuss and a full transcript are available in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/allenandovery.   Right, let’s not mess about, and jump straight to my chat Hannah from A&O. MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT: What A&O are really looking for from their applicants The secrets to impressing through the online application Whether a vacation placement with A&O is a shortcut to landing a training contract What to expect from the application process at Allen and Overy Whether Allen & Overy prefer candidates through a Legal Practice Course (LPC), or Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) Why the odds of getting a training contract with Allen and Overy might be better than you think

The long-awaited independent review into the UK banking sector was published this morning by a British parliamentary commission. The report sets out a blueprint to restore trust in Britain’s banks - recommending more accountability for bank executives, punitive sanctions for misconduct and strengthening of the link between bonuses and performance. Mark Garnier MP, a key member of the commission, and Bob Penn of Allen & Overy join the FT banking team to gauge reaction in the City. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.