Squire Patton Boggs to open Dublin office, hires Pinsents' Agnew

In his new role, Agnew will be the managing partner of the Dublin office. He led the transactions team in Ireland at his previous firm and has prior experience at Irish law firms ByrneWallace and A&L Goodbody.

Squire Patton Boggs said in a statement that Dublin is becoming a key hub for various areas of the firm's business activity, including private equity, tech and life sciences.

"We've seen the requirement and demand for potential platform investments, as well as bolt-ons and existing platforms doing deals in Ireland, increase significantly," European head of private equity Paul Mann told Unquote. "Those deals are often Ireland-headquartered, rather than there just being an Irish subsidiary in the group. Doing deals in Ireland is very high on our existing clients' agenda. The growth of this demand and our practice have married up perfectly."

Mann added that the financial services sector in particular stands out. Prominent deals in the sector include MML Capital Partners' USD 1.3bn sale of fund service business Waystone to Montagu and Hg in 2021, which netted the vendor returns of 11x money. The deal saw Squire Patton Boggs provide sellside legal advice, according to Unquote Data.

"Dublin is certainly a market that UK and US firms are interested in," European managing partner Jonathan Jones added. "Two of the deals we have done in the last few months were for two of our existing PE clients buying assets in Ireland. Ireland will still represent rich picking for those houses, with better value for money, plus we are seeing dealflow from spin-outs from the larger tech business, all of which will be conducive to PE investment."

Generating opportunities
Mann sees "a 60:20 split" in the current market, applying this not only to Ireland but the broader private equity market. "20% of the market is challenging, we know it is hard to transact there; but another 20% is tech, financial services and healthcare, which are still very strong, and people still want to do deals there," he said.

The remaining 60% is in the middle, with deals that are "doable and of interest", but could take longer to complete or eventually sell for one multiple turn lower than previously, he said. "How the market fares will depend on how long those take to adjust, and there are headwinds to consider including the availability of debt," Mann added.

The expansion to Ireland is part of the firm's ongoing European growth and is expected to shore up its revenues ahead of a challenging time. The firm's turnover grew by 17% overall in the past year, Jones said, with a 16% fall in the UK versus growth of 28% in Europe. "With the recession in the UK we expect continental Europe and Ireland to lead our growth over the next couple of years," he said.

"We are acutely aware that we are the latest in non-Irish firms operating a Dublin office, but we wanted to be able to generate PE opportunities across continental Europe, as well as for people investing into Ireland," he said. "We expect our offices to generate their own work locally, as well as to refer work to other offices in the network."

The firm has further European growth in its sights following a year of recent expansion and hires, Jones said, but did not disclose any specific locations. "Our European geographic coverage is not complete yet," he said. "We know where we would like to open and would use a similar greenfield startup model that we have used for Ireland."

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