Post-merger Dentons to put off integrating profit pools for indefinite period
Soon-to-be merged Dentons is set to delay indefinitely the integration of partners into geographically defined profit pools following the union of Salans, SNR Denton and Fraser Milner Casgrain (FMC).
SNR Denton
The firms are understood to be working towards a 1 March global launch date for the overall Dentons firm, but the transfer of partners into the LLPs that make up the overall Swiss Verein will not take place until an unconfirmed point after the merger.
All partners of Salans, SNR Denton and Canada’s FMC will become Dentons partners on the live date but will remain in their existing LLPs until the firm decides to integrate them.
This means Salans partners in London, New York and other locations with duplicate offices will still initially be members of Dentons’ European LLP, the offshoot of Salans’ legacy partnership. Other overlapping bases are in Almaty, Brussels, Moscow and Paris.
The eventual plan is for Salans’ London partners to join the UK LLP, the post-merger form of SNR Denton’s legacy UK arm, while New York partners at Salans are set eventually to become partners of the US LLP.
Partners at the three firms voted in favour of the triple merger under the Dentons brand in late November (28 November 2012).
SNR Denton partners in Moscow and Paris, current members of their firm’s UK and Emea LLP, will transfer into the European LLP, but this will also follow an integration period in which they will remain in Dentons’ UK partnership.
The merged firm will be structured as a Swiss Verein, with five separate LLPs in the US, Canada, UK, Europe and Asia.
A source suggested that the transfer of Salans’ London partners could take place on 1 May, the start of the UK LLP’s financial year, but the firm has not officially set a timetable. The UK situation is complicated by the fact that the lease on Salans’ City premises at Millennium Bridge House terminates in a few months’ time, meaning teams could wait until the end of August before moving over to SNR Denton’s Fleet Place building.
Up until now the firms have said that the combination would be effective by the end of the first quarter of 2013 (28 November 2012), but have still not confirmed a precise date, despite the end of the anticipated launch period approaching fast.
