If the fashion last year was for law firms to divide up their corporate department into sectors, then watch out for the next vogue, which could well be to join some of them up again. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Lovells and Denton Wilde Sapte were among the firms to realign their corporate teams to focus on particular sectors instead of across broad practice areas in 2005. But the sudden surge of investment in the infrastructure field has prompted many firms to revisit their internal structure.
Infrastructure investment funds have been made stylish by acquisitive Australian bank Macquarie, which began making long-term investments in assets overseas in the late 1990s. Since then it has been active across Europe and in the UK where it acquired South East Water for £426m and took an £84m stake in Birmingham International Airport. More high-profile roles include involvement in multi-billion pound bids for BAA and the London Stock Exchange, the latter coming under the heading of financial infrastructure as Macquarie’s derogatory bid-time description of it as a complacent ‘utility’ made clear.
