Sports Calendar

Adam Signy, 52, £1.3m
Signy is a private equity and M&A whizz kid at Clifford Chance, the world’s biggest law firm. “By anybody else’s standards, it’s well paid, but by City standards, it’s not that well paid,” he says. From a medical family, he read economics at Sussex and chose law because his sciences “weren’t good enough to be a doctor”.

A self-avowed deal junkie, he starts at 8.30am and leaves at 9.30pm. “If there’s a deal on, I’m up all night.” He believes private-equity firms have had an unfair press: “They turn under-performing companies into more efficient machines.” But he says they don’t always think about the consequences of their actions. Weekends are spent with his family in Suffolk. They have 15 horses. “The only time I really switch off is on horseback — I don’t take my phone.” He goes hunting with his three grown-up children.

Steve Cooke, 49, £2.3m
Pragmatic, smart enough to be arrogant, but isn’t. His Slaughter and May clients: Diageo, BA, Cadbury Schweppes. Hobbies: guitar and piano — used to be in a band. Keen on cricket.

Frances Murphy, 50, £2.3m
First woman corporate head at Slaughter and May. Says she is “tough when necessary”. Likes cricket: often in the corporate rows at the Oval. Takes her 11-year-old to watch Arsenal.

William Underhill, 48, £2.3m
Runs marathons, cycles 10 miles to Slaughter and May from Kew “to help manage the stress”. Seven or eight visits a year to his house in the Costa Brava.

Mike Francies, 51, £1.8m
Great businessman at Weil Gotshal. Drives the US firm’s private-equity practice in London with huge energy. Watford fan: wears team shirt at matches.

Edward Braham, 46, £1.6m
Freshfields private-equity specialist. Cerebral, strategic thinker, in charge of the firm’s corporate business plan and strategy. Lives in the country.

Michael Hatchard, 52, £1.6m
Charming Skadden Arps star who says he works “every hour God gives”. Escapes to Hertfordshire smallholding: country pursuits, restoration of parkland. Rows an antique skiff on the Thames.

Will Lawes, 44, £1.6m
Great in a crisis for Freshfields: advised on Northern Rock. Kiwi — does a great Maori haka. “Has (Nigel) Boardman-like qualities,” says one colleague, and is “a Cliff Richard figure” — young for his age — according to another. Skis: has a chalet in the Alps.

Matthew Middleditch, 49, £1.6m
Linklaters heavyweight. Like many lawyers, he sees his family only at weekends. Dedicated to country pursuits: walking, shooting, horses.

Mark Rawlinson, 50, £1.6m
Self-deprecating, down-to-earth corporate head of the strong Freshfields team. Runs and skis. His wife has just “allowed” him to take up golf.

Tim Emmerson, 53, £1.5m
Recently joined Sullivan & Cromwell, Wall Street firm that tops the global deal tables. Very smart operator. “Being here, we have a good sense of what’s going on in the big banks that the press doesn’t,” he says.

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