Building a new world

It’s a truism, but if you want to know how well a legal market is performing, look at what the non-domestic firms are doing. And the most notable change to the Portuguese legal market during the current crisis was Simmons & Simmons’ announcement in February that it was closing down its two offices in Portugal.

Simmons was the first UK firm to arrive in the Portuguese market in 1992 and embarked on a lengthy integration process with its local affiliate Simmons & Simmons Rebelo de Sousa from 2002 to 2007. Although the firm will remain associated with its former Portuguese team – now rebranded Sociedade Rebelo de Sousa (SRS) – Simmons cited the size of the Portuguese economy and its inability to generate global clients as key factors behind its decision to pull out.

‘In the mid-term there was bound to be a conflict of business models,’ Pedro Rebelo de Sousa, SRS’s managing partner, explains. ‘While we wanted to grow in Angola, Simmons was not interested; while we wanted to grow through merging with other Portuguese firms, Simmons insisted that we comply with strict profitability levels that simply aren’t achievable in the Portuguese market.’

‘It would have been extremely hard for us to fit in with the Simmons’ business model,’ he adds. According to Rebelo de Sousa, SRS maintains an exclusive alliance with Simmons, which will focus on joint marketing efforts and pitches to clients. ‘But we are now free to develop Brazil and Angola and grow our practice according to the realities of the Portuguese market,’ he says.

In the wake of Simmons’ announcement, rumours immediately spread that Linklaters, the only remaining international firm with a presence in Portugal, would also be considering closing down its Lisbon branch. However, Jorge Bleck, the firm’s local senior partner, denies the veracity of such rumours. ‘Closing down Lisbon is not an issue for Linklaters; it is not on the table,’ he confirms. However, Bleck admits that it was similar rumours, circulating long before Simmons’ decision to pull out, that led him to call Linklaters’ senior partner David Cheyne last May and ask him to come to Lisbon to reassure the troops.

‘Even though he did not say that Lisbon is a strategic office for Linklaters, obviously,’ Bleck explains, ‘he did reassure everyone that this is an important branch for the firm.’ According to Bleck, the firm’s Lisbon office is particularly well regarded both for the quality of its team and for its strategic importance as a business-generating platform, strongly supporting the firm’s Brazil and Spain branches and connecting Chinese clients with large investments in Angola. Perhaps the biggest indication of the importance Linklaters places on the Portuguese market came as recently as June this year, when the firm created a southern Europe seat on its revamped international board, giving the new role to Bleck. He is now the firm’s representative on the board not just for Portugal, but for Spain and Italy as well.

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