This blog isn't really my opinion on Herbert Smith – I'm keeping my powder dry for a little longer on that one – but this week's effective break-up of the City firm's merger hopes and European alliance does illustrate a factor that has been hugely on display throughout this year. Amid a hectic 10 months in which we have seen a stream of international tie-ups across the globe, many of the far-reaching decisions taken by law firms have been substantively shaped by a single consideration: who gets to be the boss afterwards.

Ashurst and Blake Dawson; the continued expansion of the Norton Rose Group; Mallesons/King & Wood; and the break-up of Herbert Smith's alliance with Gleiss Lutz and Stibbe – what they all have in common is that these events happened partly because individual partnerships had ambitions of remaining a dominant party in a global consolidation play.

As has been said for years, a merger between Ashurst and Latham & Watkins would have been a potent combination had it gone ahead as discussed in 2000, but it wasn't to be. Sure, a lot of City lawyers found Latham circa 2000 a bit too happy clappy (and with an incomprehensible comp system to boot), but a major factor in why the deal didn't close was because Ashurst would have been the junior partner.