Legal500.com article submission

Legal 500 commentary:

Corporate practices remain the engine room of many of the leading commercial practices covered in The Legal 500. As the corporate market has recovered, the UK and many of the world's leading economies have reported a boom in public and private M&A, so the fortunes of many of those practices have seen a significant upturn.

The largest, most complex M&A mandates remain the preserve of the six firms in the top two tiers of our M&A table: Allen & Overy LLP, Clifford Chance, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith LLP, Linklaters and Slaughter and May. In fact these six, with perhaps Ashurst, have strengthened their grip on the largest deals led out of the UK, and the gap between them and those firms below continues to widen.

The US firms are yet to challenge the leading UK M&A firms on local public deals, but their London offices remain important hubs in their pan-European networks. In addition, several US practices have made serious moves in the private equity market, with both Kirkland & Ellis International LLP and Weil, Gotshal & Manges strengthening their private equity practices with significant partner hires.

On the public M&A side, the leading US firms practising English law include Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (UK) LLP, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, and Shearman & Sterling (London) LLP. Although they cannot match the resources of the large UK firms, they are increasingly making their presence felt with UK corporates.

In the mid-market Macfarlanes and Travers Smith remain the leading firms in what is the most competitive part of the market. Both practices have built their corporate groups around a strong private equity offering, but also have excellent track records in the public deals arena and on stock market listings.

Predominantly focused on the UK, the mid-market has been targeted by a mix of firms ranging from some of the larger international practices such as Norton Rose and Simmons & Simmons, to national firms including Addleshaw Goddard and predominantly UK-based firms such as Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP and SJ Berwin LLP. The mid-market is generally recognised as including deals with a value of up to 500m in M&A, private equity and capital markets listings.

Readers are encouraged to assess the strength of a corporate group across a range of practice areas. Client feedback consistently highlights that leading M&A advice needs to be complemented by top-tier practices in areas such as corporate tax, EU and competition, and pensions. Indeed, it is often in antitrust and general regulatory advice that a firm can add significant value to their client service.

This year we have renamed our domestic flotations (including AIM) section Flotations: small and mid-cap.