Norton Rose Fulbright and Chadbourne & Parke have voted to merge, creating a firm with 1,000 lawyers in the US including 300 lawyers in New York.
The new firm will be known as Norton Rose Fulbright. The Chadbourne combination also brings the firm offices in Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Istanbul.
The Lawyer revealed at the start of the month that the pair were on the brink of a combination.
Chadbourne has global revenue of £163m. Meanwhile Norton Rose Fulbright’s global revenue is $1.156bn.
The merger is effectively a bolt-on for Norton Rose, which has grown rapidly through a series of mergers since its merger with Houston firm Fulbright & Jaworski in 2012.
The merger sees Norton Rose Fulbright prioritise building a global energy and projects practice, also enabling it to deepen its reach in the US.
Chadbourne has 103 partners in nine cities globally including 15 in London. The bulk are in the US, where it has 75 partners.
Meanwhile Norton Rose Fulbright has 1,156 partners and 3,099 lawyers worldwide as of the 2015/16 financial year.
According to The Lawyer’s Global 200 report, the two firms’ average profit per equity partner (PEP) is roughly the same. Chadbourne’s PEP is £512.3m, while Norton Rose Fulbright’s PEP is £550m.
In the last few years, Norton Rose Fulbright has been in rapid expansion mode. Last year, the firm acquired Canadian firm Bull Housser to add a Vancouver base to its network after also previously merging with Macleod Dixon and Ogilvy Renault.
Chadborne has been in the market for a merger in recent years. In 2015, it held merger talks with US rival Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, but the discussions were later called off following two months of speculation. Had the merger gone ahead, it would have created a firm with more than 930 lawyers and turnover above $800m (£526.3m).
