2023-05-22 12:04:47
The trend of mergers in the world: Yesterday (Sunday) a “mega-merger” was announced, one of the largest in the field of law in the world – between the British firm Allen & Overy, which employs about 2,800 lawyers, and the American firm Sherman & Sterling ( Sherman Sterling), which employs about 1,000 lawyers.
The merger will create the third largest firm in the world, with 3,900 lawyers, and will be spread over 49 branches worldwide. Both offices work in Israel. In Tel Aviv there is a branch for Allen & Aubrey.
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According to a publication in Reuters from today (Mon), the transaction will create an office with a turnover of 3.4 billion dollars. The merged firm will be called AO& Shearman. According to the companies, the merger will give Allen & Aubrey greater access to Sterling & Sherman’s US corporate client base, which in turn will benefit from A&O’s global reach.
According to Attorney Zohar Fisher, founder of the Robos company that deals with lawyer mergers, “Merger processes in the legal sector are not the property of law firms in Israel alone – this is a phenomenon that is increasing worldwide, among other things as a result of the Corona crisis and the need for the legal sector to improve and become more efficient – including on The background of the technology and the Generative AI systems (such as ChatGPT) which are increasingly entering law firms at an accelerated pace.”
Attorney Fisher adds that “the current merger follows the failure of the merger talks between Shearman & Sterling and Hogan Lovells several months ago, and according to the current pace of processes – it seems that several more mergers are on the way” – mergers that will create ‘global’ offices that include thousands of lawyers and professionals around the world”.
Dr. Eyal Shanhav, head of the international department of Goldfarb Gross Seligman, who knows the global legal market well, said today that the merger is one of the most significant moves in the field of global law and has a far-reaching effect.
According to him, for many years there has been competition between prominent American firms and English firms that are widely spread around the world. “To date, most of the activity of issuances, mergers and acquisitions in the USA has been handled by leading American offices, and the English offices have had partial success in entering the American market, which is the leader in the world.
“The merger of A&O with Sherman & Sterling expresses a step in which a leading English firm and a leading American firm merge. This gives the English firm a very significant foothold in the American market.”
However, there are already a long list of other global firms such as Denton, DLA, Baker McKenzie, White & Case and more.
Dr. Shanhav adds that the Sherman & Sterling firm has suffered in recent years from a decrease in profitability. The firm, which in the 1990s was among the top five in the US, has declined over the years.
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