Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft are set to merge in the largest-ever law firm tie-up, creating a behemoth with combined revenues of more than $3.6bn.
The new firm, which will be known as Hogan Lovells Cadwalader, will become the world’s fifth-largest law firm by revenue and house more than 3,000 lawyers globally.
Hogan Lovells — which itself was created from the transatlantic merger of US firm Hogan & Hartson with the UK’s Lovells in 2010 — is by far the dominant party, with more than six times the number of lawyers and offices than New York-headquartered Cadwalader. Hogan Lovells chief executive officer, Miguel Zaldivar, will be CEO of the combined firm.
Partners will vote on the combination in the spring with the merger expected to go live as soon as June 2026, according to Zaldivar.
“This is history in the making,” Zaldivar told the Financial Times on Thursday. “We’re doing this in part to address our client needs . . . the days of smaller firms teaming up and multiple relationships [for each client with different firms], we see them as passing.”
“When you have a strong balance sheet — $3bn plus — when you have no debt, when you have a very well capitalised firm, when your brand has consistently improved . . . then the icing on the cake is getting New York right.”
Equity partners at Hogan Lovells earn an average of $3.07mn. Cadwalader’s profit per equity partner — a key metric to compare in any law firm merger — is $3.7mn.
Hogan Lovells will account for a greater proportion of the equity partners and a larger amount of the income of the combined firm, according to a person familiar with the deal’s terms.
The deal comes after Cadwalader, one of Wall Street’s oldest law firms and a pre-eminent name in finance, has lost tens of partners this year, including from senior management.
The firm has also faced scrutiny over its decision to do a deal with US President Donald Trump in April, committing at least $100mn in pro bono legal services to the administration to avoid being targeted in a White House crackdown on Big Law earlier this year.
Pat Quinn, Cadwalader’s co-managing partner, told the FT that the firm was coming to the end of its second-ever strongest year by revenue and had hired more than 95 lawyers, including 10 partners, in the past 12 months. The firm predicts it will finish the year with revenues of $625mn.
The firms started talking about a possible deal in November 2024 before pausing conversations in March, Zaldivar said. Discussions restarted in autumn this year.
Zaldivar said the firms did not envisage major lay-offs from the combination, despite duplicate offices in London, New York and Washington DC.
The tie-up marks the latest in a run of large mergers in the legal industry as firms look to get a stronger foothold on both sides of the Atlantic and scale up in the face of pressure to make heavy investments in technology and artificial intelligence.
UK law firm Ashurst and the US’s Perkins Coie agreed a merger last month, which will create one of the top 20 law firms globally by revenue, while America’s Winston & Strawn announced a tie-up with Britain’s Taylor Wessing this week for a 1,400-lawyer firm that will be known as Winston Taylor.
UK “magic circle” firm Allen & Overy and New York’s Shearman & Sterling also merged in 2024 to create A&O Shearman. The combined firm posted revenues of $3.7bn for the last financial year.
