Weil Gotshal votes to wind down a 95-year-old firm

Partners were handed a management committee recommendation on 28 October to pursue an orderly dissolution of the firm, which represented Lehman Brothers and Enron through their collapses and built one of the top restructuring practices in the business. The proximate cause was defection, not debt. Corporate chair Michael Aiello left for Cravath and took five partners with him, private-equity partner Christopher Machera went to Paul Weiss, and two London M&A partners decamped to Sullivan & Cromwell, as the New York Times reports. Merger talks with Willkie Farr collapsed after Weil's expected next leader, Ramona Nee, declined the top job in August. Weil has brought in AlixPartners to manage the wind-down, which the Wall Street Journal reports typically signals a coordinated process for cash, contracts and client files rather than a sudden shutdown. For roughly 1,200 lawyers, the real negotiation starts now: which rival inherits which practice, and on what terms.