JD Journal » milbank tweed

Merger of King & Wood and Mallesons Stephens Jaques Creates Largest Law Firm in Asia

rebneely — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:45:48 +0000

The merger of King & Wood and Mallesons Stephens Jaques will create Asia’s largest law firm, with over 2,180 lawyers in both China and Australia, as well as in cities including London, New York and Tokyo.

Stuart Fuller, who will become global managing partner of the combined firm, King & Wood Mallesons, when the alliance takes effect March 1^st, was quoted as saying in the December 16^th businessweek.com article: “We’re creating a new law firm for the Asian century.”

The firms’ Hong Kong offices will merge and combine with the partnerships in China and Australia through a “verein structure”, and will maintain separate finances. While law firms including London-based Ashurst LLP and Australia’s Blake Dawson have agreed to merge this year, others, like Herbert Smith LLP of London and Germany’s Gleiss Lutz, are ending alliances.

Anthony Root, the China practice head of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy LLP, was quoted as saying of the merger that it “is a pioneering step by two firms seeking to go global. Like any such effort, it presents significant opportunities as well as challenges.”

The combined firm will be able to offer Chinese state- owned enterprises venturing abroad one-stop shopping, as it were, in the form of advice on energy and resource acquisitions, Wang Ling, King & Wood’s Beijing- based managing partner, was quoted as having said in an interview.

Robert Milliner, chief executive partner at Mallesons was quoted as saying: “Australia and China are more robust parts of the world and our clients there are still looking for growth. The world has become much more complex and we’re primarily placed in these opportunity markets.

China is Australia’s largest trading partner. The demand for iron ore and coal is driving the biggest resources boom in one hundred years in Australia. In 2010, relations between the two countries were strained with the trial and imprisonment in China of Stern Hu, an Australian convicted of accepting bribes and commercial spying while working for Rio Tinto Group.

King & Wood Mallesons joins together the Australian firm with the highest profit-per-partner and legal publisher Chambers and Partners’ best China law firm of 2010, and will have 21 offices, including 11 in China, five in Australia, and in London, New York and Tokyo.

The two firms, with the merger of their Hong Kong partnerships, will more than 130 lawyers in the city, which maintains a separate legal system from that of mainland China. Wang Junfeng, who left a Chinese state-owned law firm to found King & Wood in 1993, will be chairman of the combined firm based in Beijing.

King & Wood is a leading law firm in China, providing comprehensive legal solutions to multinational and Chinese clients across a broad range of cross-border and domestic transactions.

Mallesons Stephen Jaques is a commercial law firm that operates in the Asia-Pacific region. It is one of the 30 largest law firms in Australia, and is widely regarded as one of the top commercial law firms in Australia.

Morning Roundup

joshua — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 13:47:30 +0000

Good morning everyone! Today is Friday, November 26th, and it’s Black Friday! Here’s a quick look back at the latest headlines.

Former Texas solicitor general Gregory Coleman died in a plane crash…

Milbank will pay associate bonuses on what is rapidly becoming known as the Cravath scale…

Skadden matched the associate bonus scale announced earlier this week by Cravath…

Milbank Falls In Line On Bonuses

joshua — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 19:33:22 +0000

Milbank will pay associate bonuses on what is rapidly becoming known as the Cravath scale. For the second year in a row, Cravath started bonus season off with bonuses far below those of two years ago, and firms have hastily fallen in behind issuing bonuses at the same rate. With numbers matching exactly there isn’t even a pretense that the bonuses are reflective of the firm’s actual profits for the year, and all three firms that have announced bonuses so far this year have said that nearly every associate will receive the full bonus, which means that they are no longer even pretending that the bonuses are conditional on an associate’s individual contribution to the firm.

First year associates will receive a bonus of $7,500 and seventh years will get $35,000. For most classes, these bonuses are exactly the same as last year’s, with only seventh year associates getting bumped up from $30,000.

But it’s still early and most firms have yet to announce their year end bonuses. Maybe they’ll surprise us.

Morning Roundup

joshua — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:45:27 +0000

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, December 1, and here’s a look back at the stories making news yesterday…

BigLaw is promoting fewer to partner this year…

An aspiring lawyer in New York has been refused admission to the bar because of his excessive student loans…

Nelson Mullins opens a new office in West Virginia…

Chadbourne & Parke is paying associates the money originally cut from their salaries…

and another firm has matched the Cravat bonus schedule…

And the Beat Goes On…

joshua — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:01:26 +0000

Yet another firm has matched the Cravat bonus schedule. This time it’s Milbank Tweed. I’m digging and digging, looking for a new angle or a different way to say this, but really – it’s the same story. First year associates will receive $7500, seniors will get $30k, and everyone else falls somewhere in between.

New York’s Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP has offices in Washington DC, Los Angeles, London, Frankfurt, Munich, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing. Milbank is a global law firm, with approximately 550 lawyers, who provide a full range of financial and business legal services to many of the world’s leading financial, industrial and commercial enterprises, as well as governments, institutions and individuals.