The share of deals handled by the Asia Pacific offices of large U.K. city law firms has more than doubled.
The Law Society of England & Wales tracked publicly recorded deals from the country’s largest law firms since 2009 along with Law Monitor; and says there has been a decline in the share that are handled by firms’ British based offices.
The share of deals handled by U.K. based offices of the top 50 British firms fell from 68 percent in 2009 to 46 percent in 2016. The decline in the proportion of deals conducted by U.K. offices is offset however by significant growth in the Asia-Pacific region.
Frontier Market Push
The share handled by non-U.K. offices has increased in that time from 32 percent to 54 percent and the share handled by their Asia Pacific offices has more than doubled from 7 percent to 19 percent.
With the Asia Pacific region primed for more growth and M&A activity across most sectors expected in 2018 the deal flow from Asia is likely to continue to buttress the down turn.
British based legal firms have expanded into Asian frontier markets during 2017 with Stephenson Harwood confirming plans to open a new office in Yangon, Myanmar, further expanding the firm's reach across Southeast Asia.
