London headcount: 169 lawyers: 44 partners (26 equity, 18 non-equity)
Lawyer headcount change since 2013: +29%
London office management committee: Gus Black (chair) (pictured), Jason Butwick, Chris Field
Office specialities: private equity; deal finance and financial regulation; litigation/investigations.
Representative work: Advised GIC in a Blackstone-Group-led consortium acquiring a majority stake in Thomson Reuters’ Financial & Risk business valued at $20bn; acted for South Korean technology provider SK hynix in a consortium for the $18bn acquisition of Japan-based Toshiba Corporation’s NAND flash memory and solid-state drive business; advised Franklin Templeton Investments in the challenge to the restructuring of $500m issued by the International Bank of Azerbaijan, which is expected to go to the UK Supreme Court.
***
‘Dechert hides its light under a bushel and I’m not sure why,’ argues Dorothy Cory-Wright, the charismatic ex-Sidley Austin veteran who took the helm of Dechert’s litigation practice in July 2018. Certainly, the Philadelphia-born institution has not been the most visible of US outfits in London in recent years, especially compared with the headline-grabbing trio of Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins and White & Case.
Nor will solid-rather-than-spectacular financial performance stand out against many prominent US rivals currently outpacing it. In 2018 Dechert’s firm-wide revenue topped $1bn for the first time at $1.02bn, up 5% from the previous year, while profit per equity partner crept up for the sixth consecutive year, by 2% to $2.73m. London is estimated to be responsible for bringing in 12% of firm-wide revenue – roughly $120m.
Dechert’s image is further complicated by failing to fit into the conventional taxonomy of global law. Born outside of premier US legal markets, it also eschewed mainstream transactional work to focus on relatively niche areas of finance and regulation. As such, the firm failed to ride the wave of leveraged finance and private equity, while its London history is complicated by the pioneering but troubled 2000 takeover of Titmuss Sainer & Webb. On paper the firm, which had struggled to build a cohesive culture in London, should have a much larger City practice now.
While partners play it down, a destabilising factor was the halving to two members of the firm’s London management committee since the start of 2019. Former chair and capital markets head Camille Abousleiman stepped down to take a job as minister of labour for the Lebanon government. International trade and government regulation co-chair Miriam Gonzalez resigned last October when her husband, former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, took a job at Facebook in Silicon Valley.
The firm moved to rebuild, with Gus Black in March promoted to chair and ex-Kirkland & Ellis partner Chris Field appointed to the committee. Black is global co-chair of the financial services group, which, including funds, generates 15-20% of firm-wide revenue, while Jason Butwick – who acted as London managing partner from 2012 until the committee was formed in 2016 – is an employment lawyer in that practice.
Other departures include the loss last April of corporate partners Graham Defries and Andrew Harrow to establish Goodwin Procter’s European life sciences practice, an area that Goodwin hopes to expand in the image of its successful US practice. The reverse has been partially mitigated by the hire last August of corporate partner Robert Darwin from Hogan Lovells.
Detractors used to point to a lack of bank relationships as a chink in Dechert’s armour, though its focus on asset managers, hedge funds and private debt firms should be a licence to print money in current markets; Dechert says that it acts for 24 of the world’s 25 largest global asset managers and 41 of 50 private debt firms.
Douglas Getter, head of the US corporate practice in Europe and the corporate team in London, comments on the firm’s approach: ‘We target the funds primarily and this has proved to be a very successful model. Generally, we target the mid-market and upper mid-market.’
Getter’s faith in the booming direct-lender market, and the hires from DLA Piper back in 2016 of finance heads Philip Butler and David Miles, appear to have to paid dividends. Butler recently led on a £1bn private credit deal for Ares Management Corporation on the refinancing of IT provider Daisy Group, a transaction that also involved Miles and Ross Allardice. Allardice is the financial sponsor specialist who joined from White & Case in 2016, whose key clients include Mid Europa, Astorg and Nordic Capital.
Laterals have focused on practice areas where Dechert has committed to invest, with the trial, investigations and securities practice benefiting from Cory-Wright joining from Sidley, following former US federal prosecutor Roger Burlingame from Kobre & Kim last June. Investment continued into the New Year with the hire of Michelle Bradfield from Dentons in arbitration and funds partner Thiha Tun from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
A show of support came with the promotion of three to partner in the latest 16-strong partner round, especially as London had been largely overlooked the previous two years. The litigation practice was again the focus, with the addition of Timothy Bowden and Matthew Banham, while Daniel Hawthorne was promoted in tax.
Butwick argues that Dechert’s place in Global London is a sign of concentrating on the right areas. ‘Since 2000, with start-up fund managers increasingly establishing themselves as LLPs and facing increasing regulation, my practice has evolved to cover partnership deals, disputes and also tax and regulatory.’
‘The whole group is running at a fantastic pace and that has helped morale,’ argues Getter. ‘People care about how London is doing.’ Welcome sentiments, but the feeling remains that Dechert needs to establish a clearer identity and raise its ambitions in the Square Mile if it is to keep pace with an increasingly competitive peer group.
nathalie.tidman@legalease.co.uk
Go to the Legal Business Global London 2019 menu