Bond Dickinson unveils US combination deal
UK law firm Bond Dickinson is to combine with Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice, which is mainly based in North and South Carolina in the US.
“The combination of our two firms will give us a clear partnership and a combined office location across the US, which is a very exciting step,” Jonathan Drake, partner at Bond Dickinson, told Monte Carlo Today. “We’ve always been UK-focused until now.”
Drake said that Bond Dickinson had been looking to expand via an alliance as opposed to a full merger.
“We’d worked with them in the past, over a number of years on corporate and other transactions. We signed the alliance about 14 months ago, but the cooperation and the culture between the two firms seemed to be a really good fit.
“Halfway through the alliance process the idea emerged that it would just make sense for us to be a combined firm, which would give us a counterparty that felt culturally similar to us,” Drake said.
According to Drake, there are some overlaps in industry sectors, but the two firms liked each other, which in law firm mergers is about 75 percent of the battle, he said.
The combination of the two companies is scheduled to go live on October 31, with no direct regulatory approvals being required.
“Ultimately, we wouldn’t be doing this unless it was good for our clients as well,” Drake said. “We want to make sure they fully understand this and we hope they appreciate some of the benefits that the combination will bring.
“Our clients are merging and getting bigger, and they are looking at their law firms and other service providers to provide size, scale and geographical reach. Our organisation is now twice the size and that should give us the range and scale to service our clients appropriately,” he concluded.
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