Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer

Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) has a long-standing history as a disputes-focused English law firm with a strong foothold in EMEA and APAC following a successful merger with Australian energy firm Freehills in 2012. Since then, the firm has expanded its focus, building a thriving corporate practice that serves blue-chip companies, leading investment banks, and sovereign wealth funds. Such ‘twin-engines’ of transactional and contentious expertise have propelled more than a decade of uninterrupted growth, with 2024 seeing global revenues reach £1.3 billion - a 10% increase from the previous year. Following a period of Asia-centric expansion after the 2012 merger, recently, HSF seems to have renewed its focus on Western markets, particularly in the US and Europe. In 2023-2024, the firm closed its offices in Seoul and Malaysia and scaled back the aviation finance practice in Singapore. Simultaneously, it opened an office in Luxembourg, the European funds hub, for no other reason than to double down on its private capital offering, and announced a merger with Kramer Levin to ramp up its market share in the largest legal market in the world. The deal would provide HSF with instant high-quality scale across three major US hubs - New York, Silicon Valley, and Washington, DC - strengthening its presence in key practice areas such as private equity, bankruptcy, class actions, antitrust, and technology. The combined firm is also considering a potential expansion into Texas, either through organic growth or further M&A, to bolster its energy practice, a longstanding centerpiece of legacy HSF’s expertise. That said, these changes are better understood as part of a diversification strategy in an increasingly deglobalised world rather than a retreat from Asia, from which HSF is set on deriving 20% of its global revenue by 2027. HSF was one of the first to have built an international arbitration practice in London, and the practice currently ranks the fifth best in the world according to the Global Arbitration Review. This ranking reflects the high-value work that HSF has been instructed on recently: as of 2024, the firm’s international arbitration portfolio value reached $101.3 billion, nearly double its value in 2018, including five cases with a claim value of over $5 billion and 11 cases with a claim value of $1-5 billion. In London, the team covers commercial, investor-state, and state-to-state arbitrations under all major institutional arbitration rules, as well as in ad hoc arbitrations. Recently, the team represented Italy’s Eni and Switzerland’s Vitol in a billion-dollar claim against Ghana, which concerned certain directives from the Ghanaian government requiring the companies to merge their oilfield with that of a rival local operator. HSF is no less active in the domestic courts, with in-house advocacy capabilities including two King Counsels in London. The practice secured Band 2 and above rankings in the Legal 500 2025 in a number of contentious areas including banking, premium commercial disputes, competition, financial services, civil fraud, insurance, corporate crime, construction, and personal injury. To complement its expert offering, HSF uses its Global Alternative Legal Services platform to deliver cost-efficient, technology-driven solutions for complex, document-heavy cases. This combination of expertise and efficiency positions the firm well for the rising tide of class actions, including collective competition actions in the Competition Appeal Tribunal and actions in the High Court in areas like securities, ESG, product liability, and cyber/data. As an example, HSF’s London practice is defending Google in a £13.6 billion lawsuit brought by the group Ad Tech Collective Action LLP at the Competition Appeal Tribunal which alleged Google of monopolistic power over the online advertising market. On the transactional side, HSF is a go-to firm for premium M&As and equity capital market work for UK public companies. As of 2024, the firm represents more UK-listed clients than any other law firm, with 116 clients listed on the London Stock Exchange. The firm assists clients like Associated Food plc and British Land plc with shares issues and buybacks and also secures M&A mandates when such companies restructure or are taken over. Recent examples include representing National Grid plc in the sale of its electricity supply system to the UK government for £630 million and Dr. Reddy's Laboratories on its £500 million acquisition of Haleon plc's NRT business. However, the ongoing exodus of companies either delisting or moving their primary listings away from London may pose a challenge to HSF’s reliable revenue stream from listed clients. This has likely driven the firm’s increasing focus on private capital and particularly on the New York-originated private equity deals that are expected to come through from Kramer Levin. Lastly, HSF’s Band 1 real estate practice should not go unmentioned. In London, the firm provides end-to-end services across the development lifecycle, from funding to disposals. In a true showcase of its all-round capabilities, the firm was recently instructed on the development, pre-letting and financing of London Wall Place, a 500,000 square foot City of London development scheme currently owned by Brookfield.