February is already shaping up to be an eventful month with the news today that Allen & Overy (A&O) is making its debut in Australia with a 17-partner team coming just days after Latham & Watkins reinforced its international network with a 13-partner haul from White & Case. The primary casualty of this latest move, Clayton Utz, which is losing 14 partners to the London firm, was understandably so eager to get the news out first that A&O was caught scrabbling to catch up with its statement.
But in many ways this kind of move has been a long time coming. Initial reports of major City firms targeting the Oz market now stretch back more than a decade, when Clifford Chance (CC) first entertained non-committal merger talks with Mallesons Stephen Jaques. And both CC and Linklaters have scouted out the market in recent years, attracted by Australia’s strategically useful position in Asia and the country’s reputation for churning out technically accomplished and versatile lawyers with a commercial mindset.
