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Proposed A&O Shearman Merger Needs 75% Partnership Approval To Survive

Will the firms be able to get the votes in? Senior partners seem confident.

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handshake-2998302_640On Sunday, Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling announced their plans to merge. The new firm will be called Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, or A&O Shearman for short. Once combined, the firm will have 3,900 lawyers with approximately 800 partners, spread across 49 offices. A&O Shearman’s combined revenue will total $3.4 billion.

This sounds like a wonderful plan, but before anything becomes official, the partners of each firm will need to weigh in.

According to Law.com International, both firms will need to get the approval of 75% of each of their partnerships before moving forward. A&O and Shearman are joining together in the wake of prior merger talks gone awry — A&O with O’Melveny and Shearman with Hogan Lovells.

What makes them think they’ll be able to stay the course with the A&O Shearman plan? Here’s the scoop:

On a call with Law.com International, the senior partners of both firms said they are highly confident that their respective partnerships will vote in favor of the merger.

A&O’s senior partner Wim Dejonghe said: “We are both really confident of getting that [75% threshold]. We wouldn’t have brought it to market if we weren’t.”

According to Dejonghe and Shearman’s senior partner, Adam Hakki, a partnership vote will likely take place simultaneously “later in the summer.” Cross your fingers for A&O Shearman’s future.

A&O Shearman Needs 75% Partnership Approval to Get Merger Done [Law.com International via American Lawyer]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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