Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Shutterstock

The U.K. firm DWF is absorbing a Melbourne-based law practice, enabling it to immediately double its banking and finance practice in Australia.

The 16-person firm, Korosidis Lawyers, led by founder Elpis Korosidis, will join DWF on July 1—a move that will complement and enhance DWF's real estate financing expertise in such practice areas as financing development projects, financing of residential, commercial and industrial properties, and construction financing, DWF said.

Korosidis will become a principal lawyer at DWF (Australia), an incorporated legal practice.

“This doubles our banking and financial services capability on the East Coast of Australia, as well as our capacity to grow and develop a number of key institutional relationships,” Ben Burney, head of banking and financial services, Asia Pacific at DWF, said in a statement.

Burney added that DWF is now one of the market leaders in the real estate financing space in Australia, as well as on non-bank, alternative and special situation capital.

“Elpis and her team are major players in this space and the opportunity to join our teams is exciting for us and for our clients,” he said.

Elpis Korosidis said her firm is also excited to be joining DWF. “We have lots of synergies in terms of our ways of working and how we deliver legal services through innovation and our people,” she said. “Our values and culture, as well as our strongly aligned financial service sector work,  provide a platform for our future success.”

DWF launched in Australia in 1997. The country is now the firm's fastest-growing jurisdiction and offers a great opportunity for the firm in the key sectors of banking and finance, real estate and insurance, DWF said. In March, it absorbed WARD Lawyers, a 23-member boutique in Melbourne known for corporate advisory, financial services and real estate, and recruited several additional attorneys in the country.

DWF Australia now has 150 staff members, including 27 principal lawyers and more than 80 other fee earners, across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Newcastle.

“As a result of Elpis and her team joining us, we are now able to offer our global financial service sector clients a truly integrated, national banking and finance practice to better serve them in the rapidly changing world of business,” said Mark Hickey, chairman of DWF Asia Pacific. “This is our next step towards achieving our strategy of delivering complex, managed and connected services on a truly global scale.”

DWF, which went public earlier this year, has been rapidly expanding its global reach. In early June it formed an exclusive association with Madrid-headquartered Rousaud Costas Duran, a 40-partner Spanish law firm, and last month, it bolted on the Warsaw office of U.S. firm K&L Gates. Last year it also formalised ties with U.S. law firm Wood Smith Henning & Berman.

Earlier this month, DWF posted unaudited global revenues of £236 million ($300 million).