obert Elliott, a former senior partner and chair of Linklaters who played a key role in managing the banking sector’s response to the 2007-8 global financial crisis, has died aged 71.
Aedamar Comiskey, Linklaters’ current senior partner and chair, paid tribute to ‘a much loved friend and an exceptional colleague lost far too soon’. She added: ‘Robert was a Linklaters legend in the truest sense of the word. He was held in the highest regard by everyone, both within Linklaters and far beyond.’
Former Law Society president Simon Davis, who was a partner at Clifford Chance, told the Gazette that Elliott was ‘an inspiration to me and so many others’. He added: ‘I was so distressed to hear the news. What an extraordinary man, how brave, how clever, how kind and how dedicated.’
Educated at Leeds Grammar School and the University of London, Elliott trained at Malkin, Cullis & Sumption, a tax-focused City law firm co-founded by Anthony Sumption (father of Jonathan Sumption). He joined Wilde Sapte in 1976, where he later led its banking group. He moved to what was then Linklaters & Paines in 1990 and was elected to the partnership a year later.
At Linklaters, he said in an interview for the Gazette, he spent the first few years building up the banking and restructuring group – a project he shared with colleagues including John Tucker (former global head of banking) and Giles White (former global head of finance).
Meanwhile, the firm pursued its expansion through a series of European mergers. The object through these years was simple, Elliott said – ‘to get on terms with our two immediate competitors, Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance’.
In his first attempt to be elected senior partner, Elliott lost out to David Cheyne. The year was 2006, and the loss put him, in his own word, at the ‘coalface’ of the global financial crisis. ‘All the bank rescues and rehab work – that was huge, so I think I was in the proper place in the firm at the time,’ he recalled.
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