Another Major South African Law Firm Merger
I have just returned from an engagement back home in South Africa, facilitating merger discussions between two law firms. Successfully, as you might discern from the bottle of champagne about to be "popped" by the two chairmen in the picture above. (Graeme Polson left and Themba Langa right.)
For one of the firms, Rooth & Wessels, this is the first merger and the first change of name in its 117 year history. This proud, somewhat conservative old stalwart counts the South African Reserve Bank, the Financial Services Board and even the Law Society of South Africa itself amongst its clients. They are feared litigators. The other firm, Langa Attorneys, was founded post-apartheid and, demographically, is wholly black. Its chairman, Themba Langa, is well known in Johannesburg commercial law circles.
I was responsible for facilitating the negotiations, and helping the merger committee craft both a combined strategy for the new firm and a detailed action plan to take them through to the formal launch on 1 October. The new firm, Rooth Wessels Langa, will focus on financial services, aviation, project finance, litigation, corporate and commercial law, property law and will also be launching a multidisciplinary tax advisory service with a focus on customs and excise.
What is truly fascinating is that the two firms represent sectors of South Africa society that less than two decades ago were effectively at war with one another. It is wonderful to watch differences being overcome as people craft strategy together, to achieve objectives that would be out of reach for them individually as separate firms. I am firmly of the belief that it is not so much cultural differences that kill mergers, as the failure to create a clear, detailed and highly compelling view of the future firm, focusing particularly on those aspects that can only be achieved together. That way, the momentum to overcome differences that do exist or that arise later is generated almost spontaneously.
Rooth Wessels Langa will have black economic empowerment ("BEE") credentials (essential in South Africa today) that are unsurpassed amongst the mainstream commercial law firms in South Africa, together with deep and sophisticated levels of legal expertise and a track record spanning more than a century. In short, a sound foundation on which to build a very substantial 21st Century African law firm.