Three years ago the news that Swedish law firm Tisell & Co, a well-respected mid-tier firm and founder member of Cameron McKenna’s CMS network, was to join Ernst & Young’s new in-house venture, E&Y Law, to create one of the biggest legal practices in Sweden, caused shockwaves in the Swedish legal market. The deal, which was to create one of the largest legal practices in Sweden, was unprecedented. At the time Tisell president Olle Widell obviously relished the fact that he had caught the opposition on the back foot. “Our goal,” he said, “is to lead the structural transformation of the business law sector in Sweden.”
Transformation aside, the deal certainly worried the competition. “We had never seen these firms as a direct threat to us before, but that changed when Ernst & Young took over Tissell,” says Lars Johansson, managing partner of Cederquist. “The accountants had very strong relationships with their clients and we saw that they could develop into strong competition for us if they succeeded in cross-selling their services to those clients.”
