Acquiring companies do not always keep their general counsel; TLS per lawyer

Lloyds TSB paid roughly $18 billion to take over HBOS but the merged financial giant decided to keep the HBOS general counsel as its top lawyer. As disclosed in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, Feb. 2009 at 52, Lloyds has a team of about 25 lawyers in its London headquarters while HBOS had some 50 lawyers when the rescue took place. Typically, the acquirer’s general counsel takes over the merged legal department (See my post of Jan. 30, 2009: Bank of New York acquired Mellon.).

On a side note, the article added that the estimated annual legal spend of HBOS was about $44 million. Note the closeness of that ratio (about $808,000 total legal spend per lawyer) to the rule-of-thumb number of about $1 million in TLS per inside lawyer.