A trio of City firms have had the misfortune of seeing a mega-mandate come to an end, after the collapse of the $66bn (£43bn) hostile takeover of Rio Tinto by BHP Billiton.Yikes.

BHP has pulled out of its bid to take over its rival mining company today, citing risks to shareholder value in the wake of the economic crisis.

Slaughter and May, Linklaters and Allen & Overy (A&O) had all taken headline roles on the multibillion-dollar bid, which was set to become the second-largest M&A deal of all time after Vodafone’s 1999 $180bn (£120bn) takeover of German telecoms rival Mannesmann. Not the first deal to fall over in recent months but maybe the biggest for some time to come; more (but smaller) over…

Rio Tinto rejected the original takeover bid in 2007 but BHP returned a week later with a hostile bid.

The original instructions provided a raft of work for all three City firms for a 12-month period. On a more upbeat note…

Davis Polk & Wardwell has scored another credit crunch-related mandate, advising US bank Citigroup on its $20bn (£13.4bn) government bailout. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton advised the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Lloyds TSB and its takeover target HBOS have turned to Eversheds to deal with the employment law issues that will arise if the banks combine. Hopefully helping the shed stem the flow of some of its workforce…

UK group action specialist Edwin Coe has been instructed to advice depositors who lost over £800m in offshore accounts with troubled Icelandic bank Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander.

And in other interesting news, probably arising from a lack of deals in this case Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has announced that it is to halve its year-end associate bonuses, reports The American Lawyer. Oh dear, not all good news but we tried…

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