Greenberg Traurig’s executive chair Richard Rosenbaum has pointed to his firm’s track record for independent thinking as it enters Italy through a merger in Milan.
In July, the northern Italian city will become the location of the Miami-bred firm’s 40th office, after Greenberg absorbs its local ally of 14 years, Santa Maria Studio Legale. Two Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer veterans will also join the firm’s first Italian base: local real estate head Marzio Longo and finance partner Corrado Angelelli, giving it a starting team of around 50 lawyers.
Milan continues the unusual path followed by Greenberg in Europe. While US firms have typically prioritised Europe’s larger financial centres, such as Frankfurt and Paris, Greenberg entered the continent with a launch in Amsterdam in 2003 – six years before opening in London in 2009. Warsaw followed in 2012 and then Berlin in 2015, with Milan now bringing its European headcount past the 300-lawyer mark.
‘We started in Miami, not New York, we went to Texas and Chicago before everyone started to go there…’
Richard Rosenbaum, Greenberg Traurig
Speaking to Legal Business, Rosenbaum pointed to a significant headcount growth and an even stronger revenue growth across the firm’s European offices. ‘In recent times, as particularly our fund practice has increased greatly and our real estate and restructuring practices have also grown in both capability and brand, we have had more and more interest in Italy.’
Accordingly, the new Milan office will have a particular focus on real estate, private equity-related finance and M&A, while also operating in competition and litigation. Luigi Santa Maria and Mario Santa Maria will serve as co-managing partners of the office, which will be known as Greenberg Traurig Santa Maria.
Greenberg enters a market that has traditionally been unkind to both UK and US firms – their models proving difficult to export to a country where lawyers are more inclined to run their own firms than taking orders from outside, and a large part of the local client base comprises small and medium-sized enterprises. However, more recent entrants – including Linklaters, Latham & Watkins and White & Case, which all launched between 2007 and 2011 – have built relatively successful niches in the market, while Dentons’ Rome and Milan arms have been growing rapidly since 2015.
Rosenbaum is adamant Greenberg has long made a success of going against the grain. ‘We tend to be an independent thinker. We always have been. We started in Miami, not New York; we started by representing all kinds of companies of all shapes and sizes. We went to Texas and Chicago before everyone started to go there.’
On Europe, he added: ‘We didn’t have to be in Frankfurt – we were just as comfortable representing tech players, real estate developers and others in Berlin. And the Berlin team has done extremely well financially. We went for London in July 2009, when more firms were closing than opening and yet we have built a great office. We know what we are good at and we keep replicating that model.’