Where will Weil’s wobbles end?

Yeah, it's probably not been a week that Weil got so wanted to have.

A wobbly week?

A wobbly week, yes.

Well, it's been a wobbly September so far for a while.

And I would say that the key moment when people really have started looking was just over a week ago when Mike Aiello's move to Cravath was reported.

And he's this very big, important corporate partner in New York.

who's taking a team of five other partners with him to Kravath, which is a massive move for them and a massive move for Weil because he's been very important there.

And I think that's sort of, hit home how while Cam potentially lose such a big name and then over in London we had their London co-head David Avery Gee move to Sullivan and Cromwell with another corporate partner called Sarah Flatty and those moves have just sort of highlighted the issues that potentially wow has why has it lost such big names and why might it possibly lose some more I think there's a real degree of uncertainty there at the moment because of this

So to unpack some of that, the Aiello move sent huge shockwaves in New York and actually had an immediate impact on what was going on in London, in Weil's London office.

Because Mike Aiello, who is a real titan of corporate work, he acts for a lot of strategics in their M&As and so on.

He worked very, very closely with David Avery Gee, who was up until very, very recently the co-head of London.

And when I say very, very recently, he was still the co-head of London when he exited for Sullivan Cromwell with Sarah Flaherty.

And Avery Gee and Mike Aiello, they were, as we've been reporting on our live blog, they've been a duo for absolutely years.

And I think sort of just to give you some context here, You know, they led on the 2.25 billion sale of Atlantica.

Avery Gee worked with IL again on the Cardtronics, 2.5 billion sale to NCR.

You know, on the 80 billion combination of Willis, Towers, Watson and Aon, 9 billion merger of Foley, Trasamen and Paysafe.

I mean, this is, when you have a transatlantic relationship that is really honed, It's unsurprising to some extent that David Avery Gee would say, well, actually, my buddies on the other side of the pond are not there anymore.

Of course, David Avery Gee did not go to Cravath.

He went to Sullivan, which I think we're going to talk about later in this pod.

So they've actually gone in different directions.

So you can't understate how important this is for Wiles' credentials as an M&A player for strategics.

It doesn't particularly affect their private equity practice at the moment, but it poses big questions about actually how Wild Gottschall are going to shore up that strategic M&A practice.