(Reuters) – British law firm Allen & Overy (A&O) is in merger talks with U.S. firm O’Melveny & Myers, which would create a business with combined revenue of 2 billion pounds and total lawyer count of around 3,000, UK’s Legal Week reported on Friday. (https://bit.ly/2GESYiB)
The talks have been contained to only a small number of senior figures, although A&O partners in January were told the firm was in discussions with several U.S. firms about a potential merger, the report added.
“… we have said for several years that we are open to considering a merger with the right partner in the U.S.,” an Allen & Overy spokesman told Reuters in an emailed statement.
He declined to comment on merger talks with O’Melveny & Myers.
A spokesman for O’Melveny & Myers said they “… have no plans to merge and never have.”
The talks are being led on the A&O side by senior partner Wim Dejonghe and managing partner Andrew Ballheimer, who prioritised the need for U.S. expansion when running for their roles in 2016, the legal journal report added.
(Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Philip George and Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru; editing by David Evans)