Slicing up a €600m market

THE FRIDAY INTERVIEW:Andrew Doyle, managing partner, Maples and Calder

A FAMILIAR PATTERN emerges when you talk to Andrew Doyle, managing partner of the Dublin office of international law firm Maples and Calder. He exudes confidence and positivity when talking about the law and his firm, but when you raise the issue of money, it’s like when a car that has been running smoothly suddenly begins spluttering and threatens to come to an unwanted halt.

“I couldn’t answer that,” he laughs, when asked what percentage of turnover a leading law firm like his would expect to convert into profit. Likewise, he seems astonished when asked how international law firms such as his share out the profits made in their various offices around the globe.

Asked why Irish law firms tend to be so secretive about their earnings, he says it is a “cultural” thing which perhaps should change, but he displays no inclination to lead that particular charge.

In fairness, he is at least prepared to disclose some figures. Back in 2006 when Maples and Calder was dipping its toes into the Irish corporate law scene, it estimated the “high end” corporate and finance market for law firms here was worth in the region of €600 million per annum.

That market is dominated by five indigenous firms: Matheson Ormsby Prentice (MOP); Arthur Cox; AL Goodbody; McCann FitzGerald and William Fry.

So, on a straightforward split, the maths would indicate they have turnovers of approximately €120 million each.

Doyle is also willing to disclose his office’s turnover. In the financial year to the end of November 2009, he expects his office to have a turnover of €18 million, or 3 per cent of the estimate for the total Irish “high end” market made when Maples and Calder decided to come here. “I would categorise it as a good start,” he says.

Obviously the severe downturn in the economy is affecting law firms as well as everyone else. The market was smaller last year than would have been estimated when Maples and Calder was setting up here, and will be smaller again in the coming year, he says.

However, he is confident of the prospects for the future for a number of reasons.

Law tends to be countercyclical – though the boom to bust that the Irish economy is experiencing means this will only apply here to a certain extent. The collapse in the economy means less merger and acquisitions work, and less commercial property work, but more litigation.

He says the key factor in his firm’s move into the Irish market was convincing a number of partners who were recognised market leaders in their specialist areas, to move from indigenous firms.

“They are ‘go to’ people,” he says, and their proven ability to bring clients to the firm will buffet it from the chill winds of the recession.

The Dublin office is a new one so it has, as he puts it, no “legacy issues”. It has a staff of 119 and is “very streamlined, very focused”. He doesn’t want to elaborate on the point, but seems to be inviting comparison with the indigenous firms.

Maples and Calder has offices in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, London, Dublin, Jersey, Luxembourg, Dubai and Hong Kong. The sun never sets on Maples and Calder.

The Dublin office can receive instructions from overseas offices. The office can make use of the experience gained in partner offices many miles away. At the moment, he says, his colleagues in the Cayman Islands are “up to their sleeves” in the fallout from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

Connections and introductions can be made through the firm, and an approach to the Dublin office by say, a fund manager, would not be restrained to the possibilities that exist in Ireland, he says.

The International Irish Financial Services Centre was a factor in the decision of Maples and Calder to come here. The Dublin office is its third largest, with the largest being in the Cayman Islands, where Maples and Calder originated. However, Doyle says the primary reason for the firm choosing to come here was that it believed there was a gap in the market.

“The analysis was that five firms dominated the market and that that was a small number of firms for a market of this size. We saw an opportunity for a leading international law firm to come and gain significant market share.”

Doyle won’t say so, but he is a ‘can do, go to’ law partner himself. He left college in 1984 and was a partner in AL Goodbody by the mid-1990s. While there he worked with James Osborne on the restructuring of Goodman International during Ireland’s first ever examinership.

In the late 1990s he left Goodbody and joined MOP where, among other matters, he advised Babcock Brown on the takeover of Eircom.

He moved back to London in 2003 to set up a MOP office there, returning two years later when the job was done. Then in 2007 he was approached by Maples and Calder and decided to move once again.

Maples and Calder, he says, has a “culture around excellence in all of its facets”. All lawyers have to be technically excellent but also need to be able to apply their knowledge to “complex business situations in a way that is optimal for their client’s businesses”.

When setting up in Dublin the firm identified the areas it was going to specialise in and the market-leading partners in each area, and then began to approach them to see whether they could be convinced to come and join something new.

“We set out to change the structure in the Irish legal market and I believe we have done that . . . It has shaken things up, because for the first time a leading international law firm has succeeded in entering the Irish market.

“We succeeded because we brought in some of the top partners from the top five Irish firms,” he says.

ON THE RECORD

Name:  Andrew Doyle

Position: Managing partner of Dublin office of international law firm Maples and Calder

Background:  A graduate of Blackrock College and UCD,  he trained with Ivor FitzPatrick before moving to |London where he worked ina  broad range of corporate law areas. He returned to Dublin in 1989 where he joined A&L Goodbody.

Family: Married to psychiatrist Dr Siobhán Liston. They have four sons aged 11 to four: Robert and Daniel (twins); Andrew and Davey.

Something you might expect: His main hobby was playing soccer and he played regularly with businessman Michael O'Rourke, politician Barry Andrews and commentator David McWilliams.

Something that might surprise: He only stopped playing last year, at the age of 45, because he was getting too many injuries.