Greenberg Traurig is to launch in Germany later this year, picking up the Berlin office of U.K.-based Olswang, the U.S. firm announced Tuesday.
Olswang said in June that the firm planned to close its corporate and finance-focused Berlin office, and that its 13 partners and 37 additional lawyers would soon be working “under a different brand.” Press reports subsequently linked the team with possible moves to Morrison & Foerster and U.K. Magic Circle firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. But the former Olswang lawyers and all of the office’s support staff will now join Greenberg to establish a Berlin outpost on Oct. 1. The office will be Greenberg’s fourth in Europe, after London, Amsterdam and Warsaw.
Greenberg CEO Richard Rosenbaum said in a statement that the Berlin base would be “an important enhancement” to the firm’s network, which now comprises 37 offices globally. “As we always do, we waited patiently for years to find the right time, the right place and especially the right people, and we could not be more pleased with this opportunity,” he said.
As The American Lawyer detailed last May, Germany’s decentralized federal economy presents law firms with a tougher strategic challenge than most European jurisdictions, with leading international practices often operating across multiple outposts across the country.
It is relatively unusual for an international firm to choose Berlin as the site of its first office in Germany. Indeed, while Herbert Smith Freehills and Morrison & Foerster both chose to launch in the German capital in 2013, the overall trend has in recent years been for international firms to downsize their presence in Berlin or, as was the case with Olswang and Swedish firm Magnusson, which announced its departure from the city at the same time as the U.K. firm, to withdraw entirely.
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe announced in June that it was to close its Berlin office by the end of the year (the firm is also pulling out of Frankfurt). Orrick’s retreat follows earlier exits from the city by Hogan Lovells, King & Wood Mallesons and Mayer Brown.
German lawyers often cite a lack of corporate or financial institutions as the major hurdle for international firms contemplating a practice in the city. The last member of the DAX 30 list of Germany’s largest listed corporations to be based in Berlin, pharmaceutical company Schering, was taken over by Leverkusen-based Bayer in 2006. The city is now home to just one major listed company: multimedia company Axel Springer SE, which has worked with Hengeler Mueller; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy; and Shearman & Sterling, among others.
Frankfurt remains by far the most popular city for major international firms in Germany. Global 100 firms employ more than 1,800 lawyers in Frankfurt—more than twice as many as in any other German city.
