Hi
@TonyStark I think you can think of competitors in two main ways.
Firstly, at the level of the firms as a whole, we would essentially look for the firms that share the most important features of
Skadden for the purposes of defining market position. While the exact features that are most important for outlining market position are debatable, I would describe
Skadden in London in the following way:
a large office of an elite US firm with a diverse offering of practice areas but a focus on high end transactional work. The two other firms that best fit this description are
Latham & Watkins and White & Case.
The second way to think about competitors is at a practice area level, where two questions are relevant - (i) which are the firms with the strongest teams in that practice, and (ii) which other firms would
Skadden most often find itself pitching against when trying to win a mandate? For firms like
Skadden, which excel in most of their practice area, there is a substantial deal of overlap between the two. Now, looking at
Skadden's most important practice areas, we get the following:
- Corporate M&A (which is Skadden's most important practice area by far): the Magic Circle firms (as they are still the undisputed leaders of the UK corporate market) and Latham & Watkins, Cleary Gottlieb, Davis Polk and Sullivan & Cromwell (firms Skadden would most often come up against when fighting for transatlantic deals or deals originating from US clients).
- Banking & Finance: Borrowers: Once again the MC firms have leading positions in this area, and on the US side we have Cleary Gottlieb, White & Case, and Ropes & Gary
- International Arbitration: Commercial Arbitration: Kings & Spalding, Gibson Dunn, Latham, Quinn Emmanuel, Debevoise, and White & Case.
