Berwin Leighton Paisner and Bryan Cave to merge in April

The merged entity, which will officially launch in April 2018 under the name Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, will be co-chaired by Therese Pritchard, chair of Bryan Cave, and Lisa Mayhew, managing partner of BLP.

The beefed up firm will be among the top 10 in the US for M&A activity, rank fourth globally for number of partners working on pure real estate matters, and will represent 30 of the world’s top 50 banks by revenue (not all necessarily in tax matters). It will be present in all the world’s major financial centres and have specialist offerings in international corporate tax and private wealth.

Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner will have a presence in 17 US cities, three German cities and three cities in the UK as well as in Brussels and Paris. It will also be present in Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Tel Aviv, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore.

It is expected that operations in cities where only one of either Bryan Cave or BLP are present will remain largely the same in the short term.

“The Moscow-based team, office location and contact details will remain the same,” said Andrey Goltsblat, managing partner of Goltsblat BLP in Moscow. “No changes to the Moscow office operations are planned.”