King & Wood has voted in favour of a tie-up with Australia's Mallesons Stephen Jaques, with the deal now set to go live next year.

The Chinese legal giant has now approved the union, following Mallesons' vote at the end of last month, which also saw the firm's partners back the deal.

The firms are now set to combine under a Swiss verein structure in the first quarter of 2012, and will rebrand as King & Wood Mallesons.

Chinese regulatory constraints mean the firms cannot combine financially in a full merger, and will therefore maintain separate profit pools while operating under a single brand name.

One partner involved in the deal described the response and votes from both partnerships as having been "very positive".

The tie-up is part of a wider strategic plan at Mallesons to combine with both a US and UK firm at some stage in the future to create a global law firm leader.

Meanwhile, King & Wood is aiming to become the first Chinese law firm to go global, and by tying up with an Australian firm, it gains access to a wider international market without the risk of losing significant amounts of referral work from firms in the UK and US.

Talks between the pair first emerged in July this year, with broad support for the tie-up given by Mallesons' partners at a meeting in September.

Profits per equity partner (PEP) at Mallesons are understood to be higher than that of King & Wood. In 2009-10 Mallesons' average PEP stood at A$1.2m (£750,000), while according to The Australian Financial Review, the firm's best-paid partners received as much as A$1.9m (£1.2m) for 2010-11.

Mallesons currently has around 1,000 legal staff working across nine offices, including four outside Australia in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and London.

King & Wood, which until recently had an existing strategic alliance with Australia's Gilbert + Tobin, has around 950 legal staff across 13 offices in China, New York, Tokyo and Palo Alto.