Rightly or wrongly, the top UK firms seem pretty determined to view the cup as half full, if this week’s Big Question survey on business confidence is anything to go by. But there is a clear exception to this sturdy optimism and it comes in the shape of Theodore Goddard.
Publicly, at least, most business leaders in sectors not directly affected by the terrorist attacks in the US have been trying to play down their impact. But not Theodore Goddard – it has blamed the collapse of its merger talks with Salans Hertzfeld & Heilbronn on the “current international situation”. Perhaps, but the trouble for Theodore Goddard is that this is not the first time it has embarked on the merger road only to find itself at a dead end. Famously, it was involved in tripartite talks with Richards Butler and Denton Hall, and then just Richards Butler. But it all came to nought. Before that, in the early 1990s, the firm nearly merged with Eversheds.
