“Before I sack you, can you tell me why the signature isn’t in the blocks?”
When a then trainee Jason Glover stood before his firm’s senior partner, Stuart Popham of Clifford Chance, to try and mumble an excuse as to why there was no signature block on the contract for a particularly fickle player on the deal, he thought he was done for. “It was a fraction of a moment where I thought my legal career was over before it had even started. That was the worst moment of my career,” he said.
Thirty or so years later, Glover not only avoided the chop, he want on to become a preeminent name in the world of private equity funds and the U.K. head of U.S.-based law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Over the same period private equity funds went from a quirky backwater of legal advice to one of the industry’s key practice areas.
Right place, right time
“No one really knew that much about it. So if you immersed yourself, you could become an expert very quickly. And so that was that, really. I was in the right place at the right time and saw that opportunity.”
When he first qualified into the legal profession, the U.K. private funds landscape was in its infancy, with only pre-eminent private funds lawyer Jonathan Blake working within that same arena.
“I recognised that Jonathan [Blake] was also very capable, and so the idea that you’re going to win work because you’re technically better or even commercially better on its own just wasn’t going to ring true,” Glover added. “It really came down to accepting that you were only likely to gain more clients if you could strike a clear understanding with that client and add value for them.”
This understanding of the client, and the strength of the ensuing relationships has been key to Glover’s success. Simpson Thacher’s website does not shy away from boasting about Glover’s lofty client list, which features private equity giants including Blackstone, BC Partners, Cinven, Coller Capital, CVC and EQT.
While hard work has gone into maintaining those relationships, some introductions were more serendipitous than others. He recalls a momentous phone call he took on his “massive” 90s-era brick phone from Hans Wibom, the-then senior partner of Swedish firm Vinge, as Guildford-local Glover strolled down Godalming High Street on the day before Christmas Eve with his wife. At the time, Wibom, working as “a sort of conciliary to EQT”, was scouting out a new funds lawyer for the Stockholm-based PE operation: “These days you have these massive pitches but there was none of that. He just said, ‘tell me a little bit about you and what you do’. So I told him, and then he goes ‘OK, l’m going to recommend you for EQT’ and that was 23 years ago.”
That relationship has no doubt served Glover well—EQT is consistently ranked as one of the largest private equity firms worldwide based on funds raised.
Goodbye Clifford Chance
Glover first joined Clifford Chance in 1989, not long after the merger of Clifford-Turner and Coward Chance, following a summer student scheme opportunity. Although he left in January 1996 to go in-house at Hambro European Ventures and then the Asian Infrastructure Fund, he returned to the firm just two years later.
“I’d been very fortunate that I got the chance in 1998 to come back to [Clifford Chance] and grow the practice. But by the end of the noughties, I’d taken the practice as far as I could,” Glover added.
By the 2008 crash, the troubling financial situation and increased regulatory scrutiny meant that clients were constantly looking for guidance relating to U.S. matters, Glover recalls. And he says there was no question about which firm had the answers: Simpson Thacher. “They were acting for most of the great and the good in the U.S. market. It was important, for my clients, to find a platform where I could utilise not only the U.K. and European knowledge,” he adds.
Though having opened its doors three decades prior to the financial crisis, Simpson Thacher’s initial approach to London was for many years relatively conservative. Indeed, the firm only gained its first U.K.-qualified corporate lawyer in 2009 after Glover’s ex-colleague, Adam Signy, jumped ship from Clifford Chance.
A year later, Glover followed. He now says his only regret is not joining sooner.
Simpson’s London growth
Since his accession to management in 2017, there has been a burst of growth at Simpson Thacher’s London outpost, especially in the last few years. According to ALM intelligence, the number of lawyers at the U.K. operation in 2018 was 94. That figure jumped by 55% to hit 146 in 2021.
The firm has not held back from recruiting from rival firms to build those numbers—in 2021, it launched a European restructuring practice in London with the addition of Kirkland & Ellis partner James Watson and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer partner Adam Gallagher, and also unveiled plans to open an office in Brussels, with the launch headed up by Allen & Overy global antitrust co-head Antonio Bavasso.
The firm has also onboarded the EMEA general counsel of private equity giant Blackstone, Geoff Bailhache and funds partner James Board from Kirkland & Ellis. In 2022, the firm added Linklaters partner Sarah Lindley to its London tax practice, and most recently announced the addition of Matt Feehily as ESG counsel, its first ESG-focused hire in London.
Glover said the growing numbers of partners at the firm is allowing new opportunities to present themselves, significant for a firm that has always been known for quality over quantity.
The firm’s partner promotions also hint at a wider investment by the firm in the London office. In the years 2018 and 2019, the firm only promoted one London lawyer, but by 2020 and 2021, this figure had jumped up to three and this in November the firm promoted six lawyers.
Rival growth
While the firm’s client base, partner hires and financials speak for themselves, the growth still lags the rapid advancement of private equity rivals Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis.
Glover admitted: “I would love to be able to say to you that K&E had got it wrong [in funds work] but they haven’t”.
But he said Simpson Thacher has “a model that works quite well for us”.
For Simpson Thacher, that model means growth that “is not massive”, he explained. “We’ve never been of the view that big is beautiful. We’ve always seen ourselves as being a bit of a tortoise rather than the hare. We just play our own game, and we’re strategic about it, so we’re not that bothered about other firms’ approaches. We have always been thoughtful about our expansion.”
Like anyone in leadership in the legal industry currently, Glover does have some apprehension looking forward in regards to recruitment and retaining current talent. As junior lawyers’ demands grow, all firms are having to think hard about what they offer their people that means they can hang onto them and bring new recruits through the door at the same time.
For Glover, the culture at Simpson Thacher has been the main reason behind his lengthy tenure at the firm. “There’s unfortunately a sense sometimes that there’s the ‘last in first out’ culture around the city, which is probably true in a lot of places, but not here. But that does sometimes inhibit people’s desire to leave the firm that they’re at and come and join us when times are more difficult. So that’s the challenge,” he shared.
But when it comes to tackling that challenge, he is taking it head on: “You can’t be complacent. You’ve always got to be planning for the unexpected. Our lawyers are very talented people who want to continue to grow. And it’s my job to provide them with a platform to be able to do that.”
