William Fry ranks top firm for mergers

WILLIAM Fry Solicitors has emerged as this year’s top Irish legal firm for merger and acquisitions.

A pan-European survey of the legal industry shows that William Fry was the number one firm in Ireland for merger and acquisitions. The firm has ranked in sixth place the previous year.

The MergerMarket.com survey ranked it ahead of international outfit Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

William Fry advised on 18 M&A deals worth a total of €4.8 billion, compared to Freshfields’ four deals worth €4.4bn.

Third and fourth places in the survey went to Arthur Cox and A&L Goodbody respectively. A&L Goodbody had been the leading Irish firm in 2003.

Rounding off the top five was British firm Linklaters, which advised on two M&A deals with a value of €2.7bn.

Sixth place was were held jointly by Herbert Smith Gleiss Lutz & Stibbe, Jeantet & Associates, Kirkland & Ellis, Lovells and White & Case.

Irish firms Matheson Orsmby Prentice and Eugene F Collins came next, while the top ten was completed by Allen & Overy and Simmons & Simmons.

Though the list shows international firms are gaining a foothold in the legal market here through takeovers, the traditional Irish firms still dominate the survey in terms of the number of deals completed.

Arthur Cox was the most active firm on the M&A front, working on 21 transactions, a gain of two places year-on-year.

Matheson Orsmby Prentice was in second place, also up two places, while William Fry dropped to third.

A&L Goodbody, the market leader in 2004 in both value and volume of transactions, fell to fourth, with McCann FitzGerald remaining in fifth place.

The MergerMarket survey shows the biggest law firm in Europe in 2005 was Clifford Chance, which advised on nearly 290 M&A transactions.

No Irish law firm featured in the top 20 across Europe, though William Fry was in ninth place in the British list.