Just a week after launching its first office in continental Europe in Brussels, DWF has acquired the four-partner German arm of commercial and tax outfit BridgehouseLaw to establish a footprint in Europe’s biggest market.
Also in Germany, Pinsent Masons has hired a four-partner team of capital markets specialists from boutique Mayrhofer & Partner for its Munich office.
The acquisition of BridgehouseLaw Germany, which has an international network of offices across the Middle East and the US, will add around £3m to DWF’s top line. DWF will acquire its Cologne and Munich offices, leaving BridgehouseLaw with a representative office in Berlin that is not included as part of DWF’s announced acquisition plans.
Four equity partners at BridgehouseLaw – Oliver Bolthausen, Klaus Brisch, Michael Falter and Dr Mathias Reif –will become equity partners at DWF from 1 January 2016.
DWF managing partner and chief executive Andrew Leaitherland said BridgehouseLaw would provide capability in key geographic regions and enable growth opportunities in the tech and energy sectors.
He added: ‘DWF has a large number of German clients, as well as clients who do business in Germany, the EU and the US, and this strategic acquisition provides a platform to access many of the sectors and markets which are important to our clients’ business objectives and which support DWF’s own strategic plans.’
2015 has seen DWF’s first forays internationally. DWF’s German launch follows the Brussels office opening at the start of December and a new office in Dubai at the start of the year.
Pinsent Masons has hired the founding partner of Munich boutique Mayrhofer & Partner, Thomas Mayrhofer, alongside fellow partners Alexander Thomas, Gudrun Moll and Hans-Ulrich Birkhofer from 1 January next year.
The team from Mayrhofer & Partner team advises mainly public companies in all aspects of capital markets and has acted on transactions including the initial public offering of CashCloud and the sale of Realtime Technology to Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE.
Mayrhofer said: ‘Our firm has been independent since its establishment in 2000, however the opportunity to become part of an innovative and strategically-focused international firm was simply too good to ignore.’
kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk
Subscribers can read more analysis in the piece: ‘Challenging to maintain’: German market has volatile November.’
