Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, a 950-lawyer New York firm, got the job when bankers needed deal-savvy attorneys to help launch a $3 billion sale of shares in Reliance Power Ltd, India's third-largest utility.

As the credit crisis drove first-quarter US mergers and acquisitions down 54 percent to $248.1 billion from $536.3 billion last year, deal volume in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa rose 39 percent, from $77.2 billion to $107.2 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The rise in overseas mergers and acquisitions as US volume hits a five-year low has encouraged Wall Street law firms led by Cleary Gottlieb, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Dewey & LeBoeuf to accelerate foreign expansion programs in place for a decade or more.

"The growth outside of the United States has clearly outstripped the growth inside the United States," said Mark Walker, managing partner of Cleary Gottlieb. The firm represented Kotak Mahindra Capital Co and UBS Securities India Pvt in Mumbai-based Reliance Power's initial public offering that was listed Feb 11 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

While Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft fired 35 associates in January and Clifford Chance ousted six in November, Los Angeles- based Gibson Dunn & Crutcher is adding to its roster of 102 lawyers abroad. The firm's foreign revenue grew more than 215 percent in five years as the total reached $907.7 million in 2007, spokeswoman Pearl Piatt said. She declined to disclose the overseas share.

Gibson Dunn opened an outpost in Dubai in 2007 and signed up Oxford-educated Jai Pathak, 49, as a partner in its Los Angeles office from Jones Day, where he'd headed the India practice and ran the Singapore office. Gibson Dunn partners made $1.9 million on average in 2007, Piatt said

The firm said it has 836 lawyers in the US and 102 overseas compared with 52 abroad in 2002.

Agencies

(China Daily 04/11/2008 page17)