Norton Rose and Deacons have announced a strategic merger to take effect in January 2010, with the firms re-emerging as the Norton Rose Group.
The new firm will retain the existing Norton Rose chief Peter Martyr as CEO, and the chief of Deacons, Don Boyd, as deputy. The new firm will boast revenues over AU$860 million, and 1,800 lawyers scattered throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia, China, Indonesia, Singapore and Japan.
Norton Rose said it was attracted to Deacons' strong ties to Asia. "This move will enhance our international reach and in particular create one of the best-resourced legal practices in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Martyr. “The economic influence in the world is moving eastwards and in order to develop our business we needed a significant expansion in our resources in Asia-Pacific.”
“From our perspective, we were looking at the merger based on the evolutionary scale of the legal industry," said Boyd. "We needed to focus increasingly offshore and looking more at Asia. Our strategy was to find a firm with a compatible culture and vision and we believe we’ve found that in Norton Rose.”
When ALB predicted that the Clifford Chance and Mallesons Stephen Jaques potential merger would be on the backburner for another decade since talks first started in 1999, it was assumed that if the largest UK and largest Australian firm couldn’t make it work, well, no one could.
But Norton Rose are now officially the first major UK firm to take a step further than the usual mass Australian recruitment drive.
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Norton Rose-Deacons merger cuts ties to Hong Kong office - The merger of UK international law firm Norton Rose and Deacons will end the Australian firm's ties to sister firm Deacons Hong Kong.
Deacons Hong Kong 'comfortable' with Norton Rose merger - Deacons Hong Kong is not been surprised at the merger between Norton Rose and Deacons Australia.