Big names pick up this week’s big deals. Slaughter and May, Linklaters and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer have all been instructed on Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group’s restructuring and  branch sell offs, deals expected to hit the region of £50bn plus. Meanwhile top US firms Cravath Swaine & Moore, Sullivan & Cromwell and Munger Tolles & Olson all worked on legendary investor Warren Buffett’s $44bn purchase of giant train set, BNSF.

On the UK banking deals, Slaughters is advising longstanding client HM Treasury, Linklaters is advising both RBS and Lloyds, whilst Freshfields has stepped in to advise a consortium of underwriters. And on Berkshire Hathaway’s purchase of railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe; BNSF were advised by Cravath, Berkshire turned to Munger Tolles (interesting fact: founding partner Charles Munger, who is no longer affiliated with the firm or a practising lawyer, is Berkshire’s vice chairman, Buffett’s longtime business partner and an investing genius in his own right) and Sullivan & Cromwell advised BNSF’s financial advisers, Goldman Sachs.

So the deals are rolling in but are the good times back? If Buffett has made "an all-in wager on the economic future of the US" then you’d be brave to bet the other way even here in the UK given how our economies are linked. But at the same time you might have to wait a while to feel the warm winds of improvement, Buffett’s favorite investing horizon is forever (and the UK seems to be lagging its contemporaries).

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