Law firm favoured by wealthy eyes £750m London listing with all 1,000 staff poised to become shareholders
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Anyone seen that the Mischon partnership have voted to float? Would be super interested to hear opinions from anyone who's involved with the firm (and just everyone in general lol)!
Just gonna
plug that I wrote about how law firms who do go through with an IPO fall short on post IPO performance two weeks ago for the TCLA newsletter.
I'm actually not sure why law firms continue to list when its clear the law firms that have aren't exactly reigning it a storm of post IPO success. If Mischon's reason for the IPO is Asia expansion, small reminder that DWF had similar reasons (general international expansion) but has since closed it's Singapore and Dubai offices and multiple offices in Australia. I also think it's an especially weird time to not merge with an Asian office (if Asia expansion is the goal). Considering a large part of Asian deal activity is driven by growth in China, Japanese PE activity and to some extent tech booms in Singapore, Indonesia etc., I completely agree with
@Jacob Miller that (barring Singapore) these are markets you are far more likely to be successful in if you have a partner firm with existing links and an existing understanding of the culture.
The other thing is listed companies perform well when the market/investors understands the company's proposition and the market they cater to. Law firms unfortunately do not offer services in such a linear clear cut manner. Where Mischon is great at private client work (and I'm sure a whole host of other things that I don't know about)
clients tend to move from firm to firm whenever they want. Even if a law firm considers X to be a long standing client, there's no guarantee that when X wants support on a multi-billion dollar PE deal they won't go to a firm with better expertise in that. So where's the consistency that investors respond well to is my question. Then there's the branding issue - by listing Mischon is putting themselves in a bucket of firms that haven't performed so well, and honestly it could outperform and change the entire market's perception of firms that choose to list, but if it doesn't then....