Ashurst taps Magic Circle firm for alternative solutions platform

Ashurst has hired Christopher Georgiou from Fieldfisher to co-lead its alternative legal solutions platform.

Georgiou becomes co-head of Ashurst Advance alongside Mike Polson and brings over 25 years of legal sector experience and a reputation for innovation for clients.

At Fieldfisher the London-based partner headed up Condor, the Magic Circle firm’s alternative legal solutions platform.

It’s not Georgiou’s first time with Ashurst. He was with the firm for 14 years and built a successful global securities and derivatives practice as co-head of the firm’s banking sector.

Slater and Gordon takes on Australian banks in $1 billion campaign
Slater and Gordon is to fight a campaign to return around a billion dollars to Australian consumers which it says is owed by the big banks.

The law firm has launched Get Your Super Back which will involve a series of class actions on behalf of millions of Australians whose super funds “may have been gouged by bank-owned super funds lining their pocket.”

It will claim that the banks did not get the best rates for customers and charged over-the-top fees, reducing the retirement funds of millions of customers.

The likely first targets are Commonwealth Bank-owned superannuation fund, Colonial First State, and AMP super.

Slater and Gordon Head of Class Actions Ben Hardwick said the funds have been paying interest rates which are far lower than industry standards, as shown in evidence to the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.

"We think retail fund members should be compensated for the difference between their returns on cash, and the returns they should have received if the trustee had done their job properly. Industry funds have demonstrated the return that should be produced on cash investments when a proper effort is made by the trustee to secure the best available interest rate,” he said.

Global firms hires former SFC counsel
A former Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission in-house counsel has joined Eversheds Sutherland as a partner.

John Siu joins as a partner in the firm’s Financial Services Disputes and Investigations team with a practice focusing on highly technical areas including insider trading, fraud and price rigging.

"Our institutional clients are increasingly juggling the demands of multiple regulators across the world,” said Matthew Allen, global co-head of the Financial Services and Investigations team. “John deepens the talent pool in our Hong Kong office and will also be an integral part of the wider financial services disputes and investigations team supporting our clients in Washington DC, New York, London, Dubai and Singapore, as well as in other local and regional capital markets hubs.”