The New Zealand legal market is currently experiencing a ‘mini boom’ as insolvency work from the recession overlaps with increased corporate work associated with an improving economy. Minter Ellison Rudd Watts managing partner Mark Weenink said he expects the increased activity to continue for the next 12 months, saying he is “cautiously optimistic” about the year ahead.
On top of the improving economy, Weenink said a huge amount of new regulation coming through will generate a lot of activity. Last year also saw the New Zealand government create of a number of task forces to look into the causes of the financial crisis. Most of these have now delivered their reports and Weenink expects that to lead to increased activity for capital markets teams as new rules are put in place to help prevent a similar financial crisis from occurring.
“We’re currently caught in the middle of a mini boom with the crossover between a lot of insolvency work and new corporate activity,” Weenink said. “A lot of our work last year was based on refinancing and restructuring and putting a lot more equity into the balance sheet and we expect to see a lot more of that work this year as well; but at the same time we’re seeing a lot of new activity in the corporate area.”
From a business standpoint, Weenink said there is more downside to being too risk averse than to being too bullish about future workloads. He is looking to build a number of practice areas and is looking for lawyers with experience in PPPs, managed funds, health, local government, risk management and compliance.
“At this juncture of the economy, we are heading along with everyone at full capacity, and the real challenge for us as a firm is to bolster our non-recessionary areas in a way that when those areas get really busy we will have the right structures in place,” Weenink said. “It’s really just a matter of identifying where the trends are going and making sure we’ve got the right people.”
Weenink said that it is a good market for recruiting: many of the large New Zealand firms have frozen hiring enabling Minter Ellison Rudd Watts to pick up high-quality talent. “We do have the luxury at the moment of being in a good market to employ people in,” he said.
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