Big fish

On 19 October 2007, two lawyers bumped into each other in the foyer of the Atlantic Hotel, St Brelade. No surprise there, as the restaurant was awarded its Michelin star last year and has been full of Jersey lawyers ever since. ‘Here for the conference?’ said one. ‘No,’ replied the Mourant man, ‘merger talks with Walkers.’ The first lawyer laughed – assuming his colleague was joking – and headed for the lecture.

The same disbelief rippled through offshore firms a couple of days later, when Grant Stein, Walkers’ global managing partner, confirmed that exploratory merger talks were indeed underway. Initial reports suggested that discussions began in the spring of 2007, but Stein recently made it clear to Legal Business that, although initial approaches were made in early 2007, no substantive talks took place until later in the year. Mourant seems to have been the first mover.

The timing of the talks rather than the prospective deal jolted lawyers. Matthew Thompson, Ogier’s head of litigation in Jersey, found it ‘puzzling when each had recently gone into the other’s turf’. Mourant first moved into Walkers’ territory during 2004 with a greenfield start-up; the July 2007 merger with 13-lawyer Quin & Hampson added weight to the under-performing Cayman office. Walkers merged with Jersey mid-tier player Crills Advocates in July 2006, absorbed the team into the Walkers brand, and used the move to new, purpose-converted premises in April 2007 to put down a clear marker in Jersey.

These initial mergers exemplify the principal hallmarks of takeovers. A good rule of thumb as to whether a merger is a ‘true merger’ or effectively a takeover is to look at the firm’s name after the event. Charles Jennings, joint managing partner of Maples and Calder, makes a further point: ‘We take the view that on any merger a so-called “culture-carrier” should be sent to the jurisdiction in question to manage the office there to ensure that it comes to look, feel, think and smell like a Maples office.’

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