But such has been the recent drought of M&A in the
April’s £352m buy-out of Rosemound Developments by Australian property giant Macquarie Goodman Group, on which Wragge & Co and Jones Day advised, has been one of the few sizeable M&A mandates coming out of the Midlands over the last year — a minnow of a deal compared with London’s mid-market churn.
The lack of confidence among the top firms’ transactional teams in the region can be seen in the low level of senior partner-level recruitment. In fact, some have even done the opposite and moved senior names down to
Eversheds is putting almost all of its growth efforts into
Much of this is nothing new. Alarm bells had sounded in the
But insiders now say that, although the volume of transactional work is still largely intact, the quality of the instructions has taken a significant nosedive.
In some ways, this has opened up a sector of the
Not all of this is in corporate. The local property market has in many ways never been better, while many of the national firms have inconspicuously managed to secure increasingly significant volumes of public sector work. Such has been the success of these areas that the dearth of regional corporate work has been covered up in the nationals’ figures.
For larger corporate teams, the new game seems to be to attempt to service
But this strategy is still dependent on the historic goal of boosting transactional credibility and client-winning skills within the
Of course, the largest national firms cannot be accused of failing to address this necessity. It is just that the need to do so has never been more important than it is now.
