Sweden's Magnusson eyes pan-Baltic reach with Helsinki launch

Magnusson will open its new Helsinki base on 1 March. The office will initially house 13 lawyers, including six partners, but could grow to between 20 and 25 lawyers in the course of the year, according to senior partner Per Magnusson.

Tomi Merenheimo will manage the Helsinki office. He joins Magnusson from Peltonen Ruokonen & Itäine, where he was managing director. Mika Oksanen, who will lead the corporate and dispute resolution practices, also joins from Peltonen.

Other partners manning Helsinki from launch will be litigation and employment expert Jukka Blomberg and Essi Rikalainen, who will head the real estate practice. Blomberg joins from Spartax while Rikalainen joins from Finessi.

Mika Lehtimäki, who joins from Dittmar & Indrenius, will lead the banking group while former Castrén & Snellman counsel Jan Lindberg will head IP and IT.

“Finland’s always been part of our core strategy to cover the Baltic Sea region,” said Magnusson. “We tried to cover the area through strategic alliances before, but we found that this wasn’t very efficient so decided that we’d have to do it on our own.”

The new office is Magnusson’s seventh in the region. According to senior partner Magnusson, the firm’s aim is to comprehensively cover the Baltic Sea region.

“We’ll continue to look at new venues in due course,” he said. “One thing that might be in the pipeline is offices in the Baltic states. We’ve got good networks there, but we’ll probably be looking at setting up on our own when the time’s right. We want to cover the entire region.”

Magnusson now has offices in Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Minsk, Moscow Stockholm and Warsaw.