Big Drop in Deals at UK Magic Circle Firms
There has been a massive decrease in deals being handled by London’s elite magic circle law firms this year compared to the first half of 2007, but at least some of the missing work is being made up in other areas.
The total value of announced mergers and acquisitions being handled by the firms in 2008 plummeted by as little as 56 percent at Linklaters, to more than 90 percent at Slaughter and May, the Lawyer reported in an article that also includes two charts of the top 10 European and United Kingdom law firms in M&A this year. The statistics it cites are from the Thomson Reuters financial information provider.
“We’re still very busy, remarkably so, but the deal size is lower than it was last year,” corporate partner Barry O’Brien of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, which suffered an 87 percent decline in deals this year, tells the British legal publication. “What matters to law firms is the ability to be flexible and deploy your resources to adjacent marketplaces.”
