Foreign law firms take big bite of Korean M&A market

Multinational law firms are rapidly catching up with the dominant player Kim & Chang in the local merger and acquisition (M&A) legal advisory market, Bloomberg’s quarterly review showed Monday.

The New York-based Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP ranked second on Bloomberg’s M&A legal advisory league table in terms of volume in the first quarter in Korea. The firm advised on only two mega deals together worth $7.73 billion. In 2013, it wasn’t involved in any M&A deals here.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP, headquartered in London, and the New York-based Sullivan & Cromwell LLP shared third place. Both participated in one $5.8 billion deal ― Anheuser-Busch InBev’s acquisition of Oriental Brewery earlier this year.

Kim & Chang, the country’s largest law firm by number of attorneys, advised on 27 deals worth $8.86 billion. It accounted for 31.9 percent of the market share in the first quarter, up from 30.8 percent for the whole of 2013.

Kim & Chang claimed the 10th place on the table for the Asia Pacific region excluding Japan last year.

The four law firms’ outstanding performance in the first quarter came as a result of their involvement in Anheuser-Busch InBev’s acquisition of Oriental Brewery, the fourth largest deal in the Asia-Pacific region.

In terms of the number of deals they advised, Korean firms dominated the upper part of the table, indicating that they were involved in many smaller deals.

Lee & Ko, also known as Gwangjang, ranked first, advising on 32 M&As worth $3.74 billion.

Kim & Chang came in second with 27 deals, followed by Bae, Kim & Lee’s 14 worth $5.2 billion, and Shin & Kim’s 10 valued at $882 million.

Multinational law firms are expected to expand their clout here at the cost of their Korean counterparts in line with further opening of the domestic legal services market.

Korea is opening up its legal market in three stages under free trade agreements with the U.S. and the European Union.

Currently at the second stage, Korean and European law firms can work on the same case and share fees. In the final stage ― five years from the start of the agreement, which is July 2016 for the E.U. and March 2017 for the U.S. ― foreign law firms can hire Korean lawyers and get involved in lawsuits in addition to advisory services. By Kim Da-ye, The Korea Times