After several months of negotiations, the proposed tie-up between Womble Bond Dickinson and BDB Pitmans will not be going ahead. Negotiations between the pair started last October over a tie-up that would have created a £440m revenue firm. Neither firm was a stranger to a merger. Bond Dickinson – itself a combination of Dickinson Dees […]
Shearman & Sterling and Hogan Lovells have failed to deny speculation that the two firms are in early-stage merger talks after The Lawyer revealed market rumours about how negotiations have begun to emerge. If such talks were successful, the newly-merged firm would have a combined annual revenue of $3.6bn and a London office generating more […]
Can you believe it has been a whole five years since the last major transatlantic merger – that of Bryan Cave and Berwin Leighton Paisner? Major tie-ups have been thin on the ground since… but rumours are now swirling that big weddings are on the cards between some famous old firms. Three of the four […]
When The Lawyer revealed earlier this week that Milbank was snapping up Dickson Minto’s London team, the juddering reverberations of the news resounded loudly around the City of London. “When the story broke, the City ground to a halt and everyone in the legal market was gossiping for an hour,” recalls one corporate partner. “It […]
The London office of Anglo-Scottish boutique Dickson Minto has secured a US deal with Milbank.
South East firm Birketts has announced a tie-up with Batchelors Solicitors, a 40-strong firm with offices in Kent and London. The merger deal sees Birketts operate in Kent for the first time. The majority of Batchelors’ team is based in Bromley, but it will move over to new space taken up by Birketts in April […]
A raft of exits from BCLP in the UK raises questions about the cultural fit of its 2018 merger
The former chief of The Ince Group has bought London firm Child & Child. It was revealed in late July that Adrian Biles would be stepping down as Ince’s CEO, having led on the reverse takeover of Ince & Co by Gordon Dadds in 2018. Since his departure in September as an Ince director, Biles has […]
BDB Pitmans and Womble Bond Dickinson are in merger discussions in a tie-up that would create a £440m revenue firm. BDB Pitmans is the product of a 2018 merger between Bircham Dyson Bell and Pitmans, which also acquired City-based Portrait Solicitors in April 2022. It has offices in London with additional offices in Cambridge, Reading […]
Mishcon de Reya’s lawyers will be able to use Taylor Vinters’ office in the City of London, plus two regional bases, once the merger launches next year. Taylor Vinters’ offices will be available in Oxford and Cambridge. Real estate is central to Mishcon’s long-awaited “strategic combination” with the life sciences firm, which will proceed as MDR […]
“I acted for a client 20-odd years ago that went from 50 firms on its panel to 12, and we thought that was absolutely revolutionary,” says BLM’s legacy senior partner Matthew Harrington. “Now clients are looking at panel sizes, certainly in the general insurance market, of two to three firms.” And that, in a nutshell, […]
Consolidation of the Scotland legal market will be replicated across UK national firms