With France’s political landscape settled and its EU status reconfirmed, the country’s law firms are feeling confident
The French presidential election in May drew widespread attention, but now that Emmanuel Macron is safely installed in the Élysée Palace, will it make any difference to businesses and their law firms? ‘It’s a great relief for the whole business community,’ says Stéphane Puel, managing partner of Gide Loyrette Nouel, France’s largest independent full-service law firm with 503 lawyers. ‘It’s difficult to tell whether this will have a huge impact generally, but it will have a huge impact on the confidence of business players in France.’
Hauling France out of its economic malaise will be tough. But, suggests Didier Martin, senior partner of Bredin Prat, ‘The M&A market is very active – when you have a potential deal between two big international groups, what’s going on in France is not so important.’ He points to the recent merger between Italy’s Luxottica and France’s Essilor as evidence: the €50bn deal saw Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton advise Essilor, and best friends BonelliErede and Bredin act for Delfin, the main shareholder in Luxottica.
Bredin’s 165 lawyers chiefly focus on M&A, competition law and dispute resolution – practice areas characteristic of smaller independent boutiques, such as the 70-lawyer Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier – as well as banking and capital markets. Fee income generated by the 137 lawyers at De Pardieu Brocas Maffei (up from 130 lawyers in 2015) increased by 7% last year to €67.3m. Managing partner Emmanuel Fatôme says: ‘Our three main practices are M&A, banking and finance, and real estate. In each of those, last year was quite busy and, so far, 2017 has been very busy.’
Ostensibly, this contrasts somewhat with Gide’s performance, where revenues fell by 1% last year to €190m – a similar figure to that reported every year since 2011. But much lies behind the top line, according to Puel: ‘We decided to work less on revenue, but much more on profitability, accounting, charges and streamlining our business units. So 2016 was the best year since 2007, pre-crisis, in terms of profitability. Gross margin has grown by 20% in two years as we have worked on increasing performance.’
Competition comes from a roster of big international law firms, mostly long-established alongside some newer entrants. ‘The French legal market is very competitive; it’s pretty sophisticated too,’ says Fatôme. ‘We are competing not only with other French firms – we are competing with all law firms, whatever their nationality. Our clients are both French and foreign investors. The market is very open.’
As an indicator of how his firm competes, Puel highlights Gide’s advice to AccorHotels on last year’s €504m portfolio sale of 85 hotels located mainly in France but also across Europe.
Gide’s biggest deal of 2016 was advising DCNS on the construction of Australia’s future submarines, a contract valued at €32bn. ‘It’s a huge deal: it will be a very long deal, delivered over several years and it’s very visible – one of the highlights of last year,’ says Puel. To get the mandate, he adds: ‘We were competing with international and global firms, especially those which have strong Australian offices.’
So will Brexit change anything? ‘The British are in Paris. They will still be in Paris,’ says Martin. ‘I don’t think it will be really detrimental for them. And for us, it’s economically unfortunate, it’s politically unfortunate, but I’m not sure that lawyers’ activities could be considered as being directly harmed by Brexit.’ LB
| Firm | Total lawyers | Total partners | No. of offices |
| FIDAL | 1,368 | 327 | 93 |
| Gide Loyrette Nouel | 503 | 104 | 14 |
| Bredin Prat | 165 | 47 | 2 |
| De Pardieu Brocas Maffei | 137 | 34 | 1 |