White & Case axes Bangkok office
White & Case is set to close its third office in less than a month as Thailand follows departures from Italy and the German city of Dresden.
White & Case is pulling out of Thailand and letting its Bangkok office relaunch itself as a 58-lawyer independent firm.
The departure from Thailand follows the closure of the firm’s offices in Dresden and Milan during the last month.
A firm spokesman said: “They’re all very different scenarios and they’re not linked. They’re independent decisions based on local factors. It’s a reflection of the fact that a lot of the business is domestic.”
The decision to split from Bangkok follows discussions between White & Case’s global management and the leadership of the Bangkok office. White & Case’s office in Bangkok will become a separate legal entity named Weerawong Chinnavat & Peangpanor, which will work with White & Case on a “preferred provider” basis from January 2009. It will be headed by three partners from the current Bangkok office and staffed by the White & Case Bangkok team.
“There’s an argument that having the leading law firm in, say, Turkey, is irrelevant. If it’s profitable that’s great but if it doesn’t benefit the network then it might as well be a used car business or a drycleaners,” said a source. “If you have 60 lawyers who do purchases and sales of Thai businesses, how does that benefit the firm’s other offices?”
The US firm has endured a turbulent week after announcing that it was making three per cent of its workforce redundant on Tuesday (11 November). The cuts will account for 70 associates and 90 support staff. Those numbers do not include the 58 lawyers set free from Bangkok.
The decision to close Dresden was taken after the retirement of lead partner Axel Bauer and the decision to close Milan was taken after the firm failed to build a successful office there.
Readers' comments (4)
Hugh Hachet, Esq | 13-Nov-2008 5:02 pm
Next in Line
Well seems like Almaty, Monterrey, Bratislava, Bucharest, and Helsinki are next in line. The three they already closed are still listed on their website.
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Involuntary W&C Alumnus | 14-Nov-2008 3:36 am
Incredibly Shrinking Firm
There have always been tensions between Weerawong and the other partners, particularly on quality control, so this is not surprising. The mass layoffs in the US will soon be followed up in the remaining Asia offices.
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Anonymous | 14-Nov-2008 5:32 am
another sign of the demise of w&c
I worked for White & Case for many years, and recently left (of my own accord). White & Case is a terribly managed firm. I should have left years ago, but inertia prevailed. It is based on the "old boys" network - where high maintenance partners with no book of business (but extremely large equity draws and other benefits) are supported by counsels and associates who actually do the work and maintain the client relationships (but are not supported for partnership or advancement).
It is not surprising that - when things start to go wrong - the counsels, associates and support staff are the first ones to get axed to preserve the high flying lifestyles of the partners. W&C is also based on an "eat what you kill" structure - where the partners eat what the senior associates and counsels kill. The partners hate each other - and there is very little cooperation or support for each other amongst them. They turn on each other at the drop of a hat.
Finally, its business model is almost exclusively based on commercial work outside the US - their US offices are not very good and they have little to no litigation practice to cover them during downturns in commercial work. I am not surprised to see the developments at W&C recently - the layoffs, the closure of the Bangkok, Milan and Dresden offices. Look what happened in Hong Kong. Look what happened in Singapore where almost half the office left and took many of the largest clients with them.
It is an extremely poorly managed firm. Unfortunately, the poor people caught in the middle - the counsels, associates and support staff - are the ones that suffer.
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Anonymous | 15-Nov-2012 10:10 pm
Well, well, well. Let's see how the above predictions turned out? None of the offices mentioned above are closed. The firm has grown in size and profitability. The Milan office has reopened. Looks like the McBitters above were too blinded by their personal failures to see the reality that W&C has adapted well to the post-financial crisis world and is thriving once again.
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