KWM

SJ Berwin, which merged with KWM in 2013, was a really decent City firm. Albeit one with a disproportionately large number of particularly aggressive. money-grubbing partners.

Sadly the rapacity of those partners (and management incompetence) saw the firm go into a death spiral within a couple of years of the merger, and the majority of them then decided to jump ship and feather their own nests rather then hang around and try and fix things. In November 2016 the firm announced that it had been unable to fund its recapitalisation plan and was looking for a white knight to save it. It failed. The firm went into administration in January 2017, staff who were told they would be paid wern't and hundreds of them lost their jobs.

KWM's Far Eastern paymasters are retaining a small legacy firm in London in order to service clients. It remains to be seen whether it can ever be more than a pale shadow of a once great firm.