The consolidation of law firms across national boundaries has transformed the global legal market in the past two decades. As client businesses went global and trade barriers were loosened, leading UK, European and US firms turned their attention to establishing themselves in foreign markets, often through full-blown international mergers – unthinkable even 15 years ago. But this trend towards cross-border consolidation seems to have passed the offshore world by almost entirely. With a few notable exceptions, offshore firms stayed put in their jurisdictions.
But could this be about to change? The close attention paid by multilateral organisations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), to offshore centres in recent years has done much to level the playing field and iron out some of the different centres’ peculiarities. Despite jealously guarded specialisms, differentiation of offshore centres among metropolitan lawyers can be very slight. As one British Virgin Islands (BVI)-based lawyer puts it: “The number of times I have been asked if I can give Bermudan or Cayman advice is high.”
