Consolidation changes the face of Scottish elite again

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At the end of a dramatic year for the Scottish legal market, the recently announced union between Glasgow and Edinburgh star Burness and one of Aberdeen’s strongest firms, Paull & Williamsons, looks set to redefine the Caledonian top-tier.

The merger, which was announced last month and takes effect on 1 December, will see the two firms combine to form Burness Paull & Williamsons, a firm with 400 staff, including 60 partners and 158 fee-earners. The Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow offices will each be roughly the same size. Combined revenues based on 2011/12 figures will be around £37.6m, which will place the new entity ahead of Big Four firm Shepherd and Wedderburn and just behind local rival Brodies.

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Consolidation is the word of the day across Scotland’s firms

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The Scottish market is awash with merger rumours. Perhaps the imminent tie-up between McGrigors and Pinsent Masons has kick-started the recent developments but Scottish managing partners now have consolidation high up the agenda.

The marriage between McGrigors and Pinsents, which is expected to go live in May, will create a national heavyweight with combined revenues of roughly £282m and over 1,500 lawyers, pushing the new venture comfortably into the top 15 of the LB100.

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Insurance – Insuring the Future

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This year was all about the urge to merge and this time next year the Insurance group will look very different, with two firms missing after a period of consolidation among the Insurance group.

Davies Arnold Cooper will be transformed after its November merger with rival Beachcroft goes live to create DAC Beachcroft. Meanwhile Clyde & Co and Barlow Lyde & Gilbert are set to combine to create the largest firm in this peer group. When the two merge later this year, they’ll become a £307m behemoth, nearly treble the size of nearest competitor Holman Fenwick Willan.

The flurry of tie-ups is partly due to major shifts in the insurance market over the past few years, with a number of large insurers squeezed after a spate of man-made and natural disasters.

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Major International – Wedding Bells

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In comes a new peer group to the Legal Business 100. Thanks to a flurry of transatlantic marriages over the past 18 months, it is no longer appropriate to sit the likes of DLA Piper, Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose, SNR Denton and Squire Sanders Hammonds in their old peer groups.

Take DLA Piper. Historically the firm has never been judged on the basis of its global business in the LB100 because the firm operates a Swiss verein structure with two separate profit pools and, up until now, it probably wasn’t appropriate to do so. Of this group DLA was the forerunner in terms of US ambition when it moved into the market, pulling off a three-way deal with Chicago firm Piper Rudnick and Californian firm Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich in 2005.

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Emerging targets

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Mourant Ozannes’ merger this summer created another large fish in the global offshore pond. Firms now have to focus on clients from new economies to stay ahead

It was nearly a decade in the making. Jersey and Guernsey titans Mourant du Feu & Jeune and Ozannes announced their merger earlier this year but, for market observers, it was a tie-up that had been on the cards ever since Jersey and Guernsey rivals Carey Langlois and Olsens merged in 2003.

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Out of the shadows

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Michael Greville is the leader of Watson, Farley & Williams, an under-the-radar UK mid-market firm that has been going through an identity crisis. The last few years have seen merger talks aplenty – both transatlantic and domestic – but organic growth is now firmly on the agenda

Some law firms have the ability to hog the media spotlight with a mere stub of a press release – think PR-savvy brands like DLA Piper and Eversheds. Other City stalwarts pride themselves on following a deliberately low-profile path, to the extent that by looking at its website you would never know that Slaughter and May even has a PR function.

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