A prominent Melbourne and Sydney based firm has announced that it will be entering the Brisbane market via a local merger – and it’s vowing to double its partnership size in 12 months.

Colin Biggers & Paisley (CBP) has announced a merger with Brisbane firm Hemming+Hart. The merged firm, which will operate under the CBP brand, will be launched on 4 November 2013.

CBP operates a series of targeted specialist practice areas which include construction, corporate, property, insurance and insolvency/restructuring. The Brisbane merger will see the firm add six new partners and 39 staff, taking the combined firm to a total of 53 partners.

The merger did not involve any acquisition fee passing between the two entities. “It’s a proper merger. We’re not buying their firm, we’re just integrating the equity in both firms,” managing partner Dunstan de Souza told ALB. “Those who had equity in Hemming+Hart will have it in our firm.”

Growth
CBP has flagged plans to expand beyond the six partners who have joined as part of the merger and a statement from the firm predicted that the Brisbane office would "double in size within the next two years."

However, De Souza told ALB that the current pace of negotiations could see the firm reach its target size earlier than 2015. “My guess is we’ll have 12 partners [in Brisbane] within 12 months,” he said. “I already am talking to other partners in the market place there; I am fairly confident about three of them [joining] fairly quickly, I’m fairly confident about others six months after that. It’s rare for me to be so adventurous, but I’d almost guarantee that we’ll have 12 partners there.”

He added that CBP’s spread of practice areas went beyond counter-cyclical areas and that the firm’s move was a genuine vote of confidence in Queensland. “We have a great deal of confidence in the Queensland economic outlook; we have a great deal of confidence in the Queensland  market and unlike some of the others that have gone to Queensland, we have no difficulty in saying openly to the market that we will double the size of the firm within 12 months. Even some of the biggest firms don’t have that many partners in Brisbane for some reason,” he said.

De Souza said that the firm was still interested in hearing from potential recruits. The firm is hiring in Melbourne and is particularly anxious to secure people in Brisbane.

“For us it will be construction and property and insurance and restructuring – those are the four areas for us in Queensland, so if there’s anyone reading your article and wants to join a specialist firm in each of those areas, please do talk to us,” he said.

De Souza said that the firm was proud of its commitment to Queensland. “I can’t say it strongly enough,” he said. “There are large firms who have been in the Queensland market for decades who have 10, 12, 15 partners in Brisbane. That perhaps tells you what they think about Queensland. But we are backing the Queensland economy and saying our office will be as big as those in a very short time.”

Beyond Brisbane

De Souza said that CBP had no plans to open more offices in other centres such as Perth and Adelaide. “In terms of geography that’s it for now. The plan always was to cover the Eastern sea board and the timing of it happened fairly quickly. We’ve been lucky to find a [partner] who was willing to merge with us,” he said.

He explained that there were two considerations at  play when it came to opening a Perth office. “We won’t be doing that in the near term,” he said. “Perth is a fantasic market, it’s not that it wouldn’t be worth doing something there but there are two things: we have a really good associate firm there Kott Gunning; we work with them and secondly the logistics of doing something in Perth as opposed to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne together is a lot different. The way we do it is that there’s a lot of interaction, people are flying between the offices; on a daily basis, there would be someone going from one office to the other - that’s not to say that we might change our mind, maybe in five years time we might talk to Kott Gunning about getting together but for the moment we want to get the interaction between the three offices right.”

National outlook

Jon Meadmore, the managing partner of Hemming+Hart, will assume the national role of Head of Commercial in the new firm. “We see this merger as a vital strategic step in servicing national clients with multi-state operations. Hemming+Hart is a proud Queensland firm and we look forward to the natural progression to an eastern seaboard firm in the new entity,” he said.

This merger will continue CBP’s notable growth spurt, with the firm managing to double its partner count since 2011. Last year the firm grew its revenues by 26 percent to approximately A$50 million. Current projections are that the Brisbane merger will see the firm’s revenues exceed the A$80 million mark. 

This merger continues a notable stream of consolidation activity in the Brisbane market. Highlights are as follows:

Picture: Dunstan de Souza, CBP with Jon Meadmore, Hemming+Hart