Davis Polk & Wardwell

Davis Polk is a New York-headquartered global law firm. Its London presence is small in scale, but punchy (and profitable!) in output. Based around high-value M&A work and lender-side finance, the firm’s London office has some of the most impressive per lawyer metrics in the City. With a head-office sanctioned growth push now underway, the firm is now looking to keep efficiency high whilst scale increases.

The core of Davis Polk’s London success has been its transactional work in high deal-value areas. In particular, it has found success in big-ticket M&A as well as in lender-side finance. Regarding the first of these sub-categories, the firm’s Europe lead Will Pearce has cultivated an impressive practice including recent work for Barratt Development in its a £2.2 billion acquisition of Redrow. Regarding the second, the firm has developed a reputation for facilitating the funding of large scale investments, particularly in the private capital space. Recent addition Luke McDougall adds a leveraged finance dimension to this already well-established offering. The result is a synergistic transactional expertise which can build on the firm’s stellar US reputation to land top-tier multi-national clientele, even without a massive London footprint.