Bird & Bird's deal push in need of wings
It will never be a deal machine but lack of corporate progress at the country's top TMT name is a waste
July 20, 2005 at 08:03 PM
3 minute read
What, the cynic might ask, is the point of Bird & Bird's corporate practice? The firm has long debated this issue but from the outside a clear sense of what the firm wants to achieve from its UK corporate practice is yet to emerge.
It is five years since the firm last considered a major strategic move that would have addressed the issue through its merger talks with Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe.
That deal was believed to have been scuppered by indecision about whether to move further outside its envied commercial/IP brand in the technology and telecoms sector to have a crack at transactional credibility.
The intervening years have seen continued European expansion – and the small matter of a prolonged slump in its core market – but the sense remains of uncertain direction in the firm's UK corporate business.
Certainly, the firm's 20-lawyer City corporate practice is still dwarfed by teams at tech/media rivals such as Olswang, Taylor Wessing and Osborne Clarke (OC).
A 12-month breakdown of the firm's ranked deals from Mergermarket, shows only three M&A deals, and it was co-counsel on the two largest.
When foreign work is stripped away, Bird & Bird struggles to come up with many examples of deals above £50m.
Its biggest instruction saw the firm advise Disa Petrolifera on its £400m acquisition of Shell's Spanish fuel business.
The instruction looks like a one-off as it was a referral from Spain's Uria & Menendez.
To be fair, Bird & Bird's practice profile means it will never be the kind of deal machine that ranks well in M&A league tables. Yet from a UK perspective, it still
seems hard to see why the firm has not made more progress in its stated hunting ground of small and medium-sized tech clients.
If the firm is serious about this strategy, it will need to boost its profile with key venture capital houses and make a bigger showing on the Alternative Investment Market.
The onus will now be on profile-raising hires like Mark Pinder – recruited last year from the City arm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher to jointly head its corporate practice – to give the practice a stronger institutional spine.
Others question why a firm so ready to open branches abroad has discounted the case for launching an office in technology centres like Oxford or Cambridge, a policy that has surely contributed to the firm's poor profile in the university spin out market.
This perceived lack of focus on the UK market seems all the stranger for a firm that has shown admirable nerve in sticking to its TMT guns while rivals like Olswang and OC have actively diversified.
With all its eggs in one basket, the argument looks compelling to broaden the firm's practice within that sector, to say nothing of the scope for extending that still-unmatched TMT brand into corporate.
A broader practice would also be welcome for a firm that no longer has quite the stranglehold it once enjoyed in telecoms and public sector procurement.
Having toughed it out through a seriously challenging few years, it would be a shame if one of the City's most distinctive firms now failed to take flight.
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