Bond Dickinson is set for the global bigtime with a transatlantic combination, but the price is high as the firm will have to be renamed Womble Bond Dickinson.

Bristol-headquartered Bond Dickinson is set to combine with North Carolina-founded Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice from October this year. In terms of headcount, the firms are equally matched, with Bond Dickinson fielding just over 500 lawyers to Womble's approximately 550 attorneys. The firms are well known to one another having entered into a "strategic alliance" last year. At the time Bond Dickinson Managing Partner Jonathan Blair said it wasn't a precursor to a merger. He maintains that, because the firms will remain separate domestic entities (albeit with Blair and Womble chief executive Betty Temple co-chairing a board of directors), "this is a combination rather than a merger".

Bond also ruled out redundancies as a result of the merger, which was quickly followed by the news that the firm was making voluntary redundancies. A spokeswoman said they related to a panel loss. She said that "fortunately, all of those solicitors who have now left the firm are moving on to new roles".

  "I've been picking up littler for nineteen hours straight and my heart is shaking. Can I go home Great Uncle Bulgaria?" 
"F**k no Tobermory, we are a US firm now."

The combined firm's revenues of £340m will put it in the top 20 UK firms and the top 80 in the US. It is the latest in a spate of transatlantic tie-ups, following the creation of Eversheds Sutherland and Norton Rose Fulbright's ingestion of Chadbourne & Parke earlier this year. However, only BD is being renamed after pointy-nosed creatures who live in burrows and clean up Wimbledon Common. Rather than picking Carylye, Sandridge or indeed Rice, the merger team plumped wisely for the much more enjoyable 'Womble'.

Blair said, "Underground, overground, wombling free, the Wombles of Bond Dickinson Dees are we. Making good use of the clients that we find, things that the everyday lawyers leave behind" "We are delighted by this transformational development".
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Comments

Anonymous 09 June 17 18:08

the name's Bond Dickinson, Womble Bond Dickinson...



Do you expect me to talk?

No Mr Bond Dickinson, I expect you underground, overground, wombling free....

Anonymous 15 June 17 11:33

Womble Bond Dickinson!

Will they go back to being the laughing stock of the legal profession? Or will they continue to slowly sideline the Dickinson part of the business until it is just a footnote.