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After years of rejecting the need for a City presence – and subsequent years hunting for a major London deal – Midlands giant Wragge & Co has finalised its tie-up with Lawrence Graham.

The proposed deal, which was confirmed last month, was backed in a partner vote earlier this week, with the combined firm set to unify as Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co from 1 May 2014.

With a majority of more than 75% required from both partnerships, the combination will create a £171m business with 1,300 staff, including 770 lawyers, operating from ten offices worldwide.The two firms had previously held merger talks in 2009 which floundered amid the post-banking crisis recession but rekindled the discussions in July this year.

The combined practice will most likely push Wragges into the UK top 25 for the first time, ahead of national rival Addleshaw Goddard. The 119-partner firm is currently the 27th largest UK law firm with revenues in 2012/13 of £120.5m and profits per equity partner (PEP) of £338,000.

Lawrence Graham, meanwhile, had fallen outside of the UK top 50 after a prolonged period in which it has struggled for growth. The 200-lawyer firm saw income of £51.8m in 2012/13, a decline of 23% over the last five years. PEP declined 14% over the year to a current total of £260,000.

The merger vote came shortly after Wragges confirmed former head of projects David Fennel was to become managing partner next year. Fennell now becomes the new firm’s chief executive, with Wragges’ senior partner Quentin Poole (pictured) retaining his role. Lawrence Graham senior partner Andrew Witts will become chairman of the combined practice, while managing partner Hugh Maule will sit on the firm’s management board. The new firm’s non-executive directors will be Helen Owers and Alastair McLeish.

The combined firm will not have geographic heads, favouring instead movement between the firm’s two UK offices in Birmingham and London. The combination is likely to lead to some job losses due to staff overlap but these are expected to be limited.

Poole comments: ‘This merger brings together complementary cultures, locations and practice groups to create a strong and distinctive offer to clients. It gives huge strength in areas where we are both strong and also offers both sides additional strength. Wragges can offer strength in intellectual property (IP) for example.

‘What the merger will deliver is a firm that is truly exceptional with almost equally sizable bases in both London and Birmingham. No other firm in the UK has the number of lawyers we have in any office other than London as we have in Birmingham at around 380 lawyers. With Lawrence Graham’s 200 lawyers in London, the combined firm will a City base of around 330 lawyers.’

Poole said that following the merger, the two firms will move into the same building in London, with current Wragges staff likely to move out of the Waterhouse Square premises and into Lawrence Graham’s current More London base by 2015 when break clauses in lease contracts allow.

Witts commented: ‘We are very excited about this opportunity to forge a bigger, better and stronger firm for our clients and people. We will enhance our capabilities in core services such as real estate, corporate and litigation, while creating major new business opportunities for our renowned international private capital team. Broader international coverage also enables us to better service the needs of our global clients.’

The firm’s practice will cover ten locations: Birmingham, Brussels, Dubai, Guangzhou, London, Monaco, Moscow, Munich, Paris and Singapore.

Its core practice focus will be on real estate, equity capital markets, investment funds, private capital, IP, pensions and construction.

There may be some surprise that the firm has not made more of its corporate practice in the post-merger announcement given Wragges’ prized legacy as having built the best UK deal team operating outside of London. However, the firm’s core corporate practice is perceived by some to have lost some potency since its 1990s heyday.

The combined firm will have one of the largest property practices in the UK with 246 lawyers; both firms generate around 30% of their revenues from real estate.

It is expected that the combined practice will move to the all-equity, merit-driven partnership model of Wragges after an integration period. Lawrence Graham had 28 equity partners at the end of the 2012/13 financial year, with a further 42 on fixed-share status, including foreign offices.

Lawrence Graham’s UK LLP has around 30 fixed-share partners – of these between 10 and 15 are expected to be admitted immediately to the combined firm’s equity ranks alongside all of its current equity partners. The combined firm is likely to maintain a slim rank of 15 to 20 fixed-share partners for an interim period before ultimately reverting to all-equity.

Both firms operate merit-driven equity systems, making the two models relatively flexible and easy to combine. Wragges’ equity spread currently ranges from £140,000 at entry to around £600,000 for plateau earners.

francesca.fanshawe@legalease.co.uk

For more comment on the merger, see ‘Mishcon’ no more but a City player at last? Wragges needs a big deal and the old magic

‘Wragge & Co was the Mishcon of its day.’ That statement from a former veteran of the Midlands giant sums it up in many ways.

In the late 1990s Wragges wasn’t just the best law firm the English regions had bred, it was a firm that broke the rules. The mix of flair, quality lawyering and an ability to astutely break away from the herd had few if any direct comparisons at the time. Wragges had a recognition and respect in the City absent from most national and regional competitors. More than that, Wragges stood out from rivals and could quicken the professional pulse in a way that Mishcon de Reya does today.

That’s not to say that the intervening years have been a disaster. The 119-partner firm remains a perfectly respectable performer. But along the way too many strategic shuffles and an uncertain crack at the City has stolen Wragges’ mystique. The firm also arguably allowed its practice to become too diffuse and lacked clarity over which section of the market it was focusing on, to the detriment of its corporate practice. Wragges’ famed morale is now, well, just like the rest.

Will its current merger bid with Lawrence Graham (LG) offer some solutions? It could. One major factor in a good tie-up is that both sides have a clear incentive to make it happen. Wragges needs a City deal – the firm has been hunting for years with increasing intensity for a union to give it the credibility it has yet to secure 14 years after launching in London. The list of credible remaining candidates with real interest is hardly extensive. LG, meanwhile, with revenues down 23% in five years, cannot keep on this current track forever. Saddled with expensive property, the firm’s profitability badly lags behind its peer group, though a sub-let deal cut this year with Bond Dickinson has at least eased that issue.

For all the spin coming out of both firms, neither has a huge range of attractive options and this tie-up would look to address a number of their respective challenges. It goes without saying that creating a £170m business would bring a solid London practice and give the pair a balance sheet that could conceivably fund the kind of international expansion required.

Culture? Practice fit? Profitability? Aside from the combined firm coming in a little heavy on real estate, they are all close enough, and these kind of issues usually only block marginal deals. Securing what would be an effective takeover would also give Wragges a chance to reboot in a wider sense as new management comes in over the next 18 months.

It would certainly be nice to see Wragges back to its best. A Midlands/City player with full-service muscle, an imaginative feel for what the modern GC wants, and a dash of the old magic could be a potent force in the modern profession.

alex.novarese@legalease.co.uk

Wragge & Co at last has the prospect of achieving its long-held dream of securing a substantive City merger, with the Birmingham-bred giant today (18 November) informing its partners of discussions with Lawrence Graham.

The proposed talks could create a £170m legal practice, with over 700 lawyers and a strong City presence.

Wragge & Co is currently the 27th largest UK law firm with revenues in 2012/13 of £120.5m and profits per equity partner (PEP) of £338,000.

Lawrence Graham, meanwhile, has fallen outside of the UK top 50 after a prolonged period in which it has struggled for growth. The 200-lawyer firm saw income of £51.8m in 2012/13, a decline of 23% over the last five years. PEP declined 14% over the year to a current total of £260,000.

Wragges senior partner Quentin Poole told Legal Business that the two firms had known each other for some time and that a union would fit in with the firm’s strategic priority to merge with a major practice in London. He added: ‘Lawrence Graham has a good reputation in areas that fit well with our practice in London.’

Meanwhile Lawrence Graham senior partner Andrew Witts said: ‘We have known the Wragge & Co senior management team for many years and we have always been very impressed by the passion that they have for their business, their people and their clients.  We are particularly attracted to the quality of Wragge & Co’s major corporate client base and sector strength.

‘We are exploring the opportunity of combining our businesses, which are extremely complementary in terms of practice areas and international reach, with both firms gaining offices in three new jurisdictions, which is, we believe, a compelling proposition.  Above all we are assessing the extent to which our service to clients might be enhanced by our two firms coming together.’

A merger vote has yet to be scheduled.

Wragges has been seeking a London merger for years after conceding that it has had huge trouble cracking the City market despite launching in London.

Lawrence Graham, for its part, has been linked to previous deals including in 2012 having talks with Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW), which were abandoned in part due to concerns over the profitability of the smaller firm.

Lawrence Graham, which remains best known for its real estate and private client work, has struggled in recent years in part because of expensive office commitments it took on during the boom when it moved into More London. The firm sub-let 20,000 sq ft of space to Bond Dickinson earlier this year but is generally viewed to be struggling to maintain its position in a competitive City middle market.

In contrast, Wragges has recovered after a turbulent period in which its property-heavy practice was ravaged by the credit crunch. The firm last week confirmed that its first half revenues for 2013/14 were up 4% on the same period last year to hit £63m. A successful merger would fall to new management to handle with current managing partner Ian Metcalfe to hand over next April to project head David Fennell.

Wragges has in recent years been attempting to build out its practice internationally, building a network in Paris, Dubai, Guangzhou and Munich. LG has a relatively small foreign network with branches in Singapore, Monaco, Dubai and Moscow.

david.stevenson@legalease.co.uk