Top Northern California
Mar. 4, 2009
Firms Deleverage in Uncertain Times
Heller’s collapse last year highlights how quickly a firm can tumble once it is destabilized and how little flexibility it can have to right itself if it is overleveraged. Firms are now assessing their vulnerability and building capital as they try to avoid becoming the next casualty. Meanwhile, banks that lend to firms are keeping a hawk’s eye on their borrowers’ financial strength.
By Jill Redhage
Daily Journal Staff Writer A year ago, Thomas Donnelly, then co-chair of Heller Ehrman's environmental practice group, defected to Jones Day in San Francisco. He was one of at least 50 partners to leave the San Francisco-based firm in the year before it collapsed last September. The defections greatly destabilized the firm. Partners, after all, are a firm's greatest assets. The last straw came when 15 of Heller's intellectual prop...
Daily Journal Staff Writer A year ago, Thomas Donnelly, then co-chair of Heller Ehrman's environmental practice group, defected to Jones Day in San Francisco. He was one of at least 50 partners to leave the San Francisco-based firm in the year before it collapsed last September. The defections greatly destabilized the firm. Partners, after all, are a firm's greatest assets. The last straw came when 15 of Heller's intellectual prop...
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