Bird & Bird has announced that it is planning to open an office in Luxembourg and has applied to the national Bar for a licence.

The base will focus on intellectual property (IP) work particularly involving the Unified Patent Court (UPC), as well as servicing the firm's banking and finance clients based in the country.

Bird & Bird's chief executive officer, David Kerr, said: "Luxembourg is an important jurisdiction for the UPC and many of our IP clients, as well as for many of our financial services and tax clients, so opening an office there makes perfect sense for us."