If imitation is flattery then the newly-launched Hogan Lovells must be feeling well and truly buttered up this week with the news that Denton Wilde Sapte is to merge with Chicago’s Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. After all, the deal’s structure is a carbon copy of the model used on a larger scale by Hogan Lovells: two profit centres, partnerships and financial years remaining separate with a Swiss Verein over the top, joint chief executives and moves to align but not fully integrate partner remuneration.
As Legal Week remarked last year, the structure of the deal that Hogan Lovells had developed promised a breakthrough in securing the long-predicted, little-realised run of US/UK mergers. The birth of SNR Denton also follows expectations of where these deals will come from, though both firms are a touch under the weight class that has attracted the most attention.
