Freshfields to close Cologne as partners relocate to Düsseldorf

The team will be joined in Düsseldorf by corporate head Rick van Aerssen and corporate partner Andreas Fabritius who will relocate from the Frankfurt office.

The move is part of the magic circle firm’s plans to “create a larger and broader” offering of more than 40 partners in Düsseldorf.

It follows a consultation announced last month which revealed plans to merge Düsseldorf and Cologne. Although Freshfields did not say which office was expected to close, the Cologne base was widely expected to face closure.

The move is set to begin in 2016, with the firm planning to find a new larger office in Düsseldorf by 2018.

Cologne’s private equity team, led by corporate duo Ludwig Leyendecker and Kai Hasselbach, will be transferred to Freshfields’ Munich office.

The firm said in a statement it would reposition Munich as “one of the hubs of private equity” at the firm. The new extended Munich base will be managed by IP litigation partner Matthias Koch.

Freshfields’ incoming senior partner Edward Braham said: “This begins a new phase of development for our German practice. This combination of partners will offer clients a more integrated and unified service for German and international challenges. This is what clients tell us they now want globally and we are responding.”

Commenting on the move, incoming co-managing partner Stephan Eilers said: “This is much more than an office merger. We further strengthen our stellar teams in Germany’s financial and industrial centres. They will work as part of our wider German practice, giving clients what they demand: capabilities in the major economic regions of Germany and a seamless cross-German offering that will harness the skills of all our lawyers in the country regardless of where they are based.”

Freshfields’ history in Cologne dates back to legacy firm Deringer Tessin Herrmann & Sedemund, which was headquartered in the city from 1970 until the tripartite merger with Freshfields and Hamburg-based Bruckhaus Westrick Heller Löber in 2000. The merger made Freshfields the largest international firm in Germany and its Anglo-German heritage has been critical to the firm’s culture in the years since.

If the firm does decide to pull out of the city it would follow in the footsteps of magic circle rival Linklaters, which merged with ally Oppenhoff & Partners in 2000 before spinning out the Cologne office seven years later.

Other firms to close in Cologne in recent years include Mayer Brown, which in 2011closed Berlin and Cologne in favour of launching in Düsseldorf and maintaining its existing presence in Frankfurt.

By considering a reduction in its German presence Freshfields is also joining an ongoing trend for international firms to slim down in Germany. Clifford Chanceundertook a review of its German offering last year following the election of Peter Dieners as regional managing partner. The review saw nine partners asked to leave the firm, and there has been a steady stream of Clifford Chance partners quitting for rival practices in the course of 2015.

Freshfields has also seen departures and moves from Cologne in recent years. In 2014 a team of arbitrators quit Freshfields to set up a Cologne boutique, Borris Hennecke Kneisel. Two years previously the firm relocated two Cologne-based employment lawyers to Frankfurt after its entire Frankfurt employment team also quit to set up a boutique.

Cologne and Düsseldorf are geographically close. While there are still a number of firms with a base in the former, the majority of firms looking to establish a presence in the Rhineland, which is Germany’s industrial engine, plump for Düsseldorf instead.

In 2010 German firm Graf von Westphalen split from its Cologne and Freiburg teams but chose to launch in Düsseldorf instead, while in 2007 Beiten Burkhardt merged Cologne and Düsseldorf into the latter city. A number of DAX30 companies, such as Bayer, Eon, Henkel and RWE, are headquartered in or near the city, while only Lufthansa has its headquarters in Cologne.

More recently a spate of international firms have chosen to shut down their Berlin offices in favour of focusing on other centres such as Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich. This year has seen Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe and Olswang both pull out of the German capital.