City firms rush to link with niche crime practitioners

ENTERPRISE ACT: top lawyer predicts huge level of confusion

The introduction of the Enterprise Act last week - which includes anti-cartel provisions allowing for directors to be prosecuted while their companies are pursued in the civil courts - has led to more links between specialist crime firms and big City players.

Byrne & Partners, a City white-collar crime firm, has announced a deal with Simmons & Simmons, while Lovells said it had established a string of relations with similar niche firms.

Bernard O'Sullivan, one of several fraud partners who left City firm Dechert to form Byrne & Partners earlier this year, said the relationship with Simmons was non-exclusive but that it would involve the firms making mutual recommendations for work and training together.

He said: 'We have experience of criminal prosecutions against directors of companies, and the attitudes and prosecution techniques of the Serious Fraud Office and other regulatory authorities that will compliment the corporate defence work that Simmons will do.'

Lesley Ainsworth, a London-based competition law partner with Lovells, said: 'We have established a number of links with white-collar crime firms, though these are non-exclusive.'

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has already established a loose training, marketing and business development alliance with four specialist City firms - Peters & Peters, Simons Muirhead & Burton, Tarlo Lyons and Corker Binning.

Meanwhile, the former deputy head of the European Commission's cartel unit predicted this week that the Enterprise Act would create an 'enormous amount of confusion'.

English barrister Julian Joshua, now a Brussels-based competition partner with US firm Howrey Simon Arnold & White, said: 'The commission always used to be the main enforcer of anti-cartel activity, with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in a subordinate role.

'The different procedures and methods they adopt [now that the OFT is empowered to start investigations under the Enterprise Act] could easily lead one to trip up the other.'

Jeremy Fleming