Dealmaking has slowed—except among dealmakers

IN THE MARKET for corporate counsel, building is more common than buying. Shelling out for a bullpen of bankers or lawyers is often more costly than poaching a rival’s star performers. So if mergers are, like second marriages, a triumph of hope over experience, then the advisers who put them together really should know better when it comes to their own family. Though their clients are announcing tie-ups at the slowest pace in a decade, in recent weeks the corporate consiglieri have struck a flurry of deals among themselves. Three big transactions illustrate how they may be fooling themselves.On May 21st Allen & Overy, one of London’s elite “magic circle” of law firms, announced a tie-up with Shearman & Sterling, a prestigious Wall Street “white shoe” practice. The merger will create a transatlantic giant with annual revenues exceeding $3bn. Especially for the British partner, though, it may end in heartache. Shearman has struggled to keep up with competitors and has haemorrhaged partners in recent years; in March it abandoned a tie-up with Hogan Lovells, another big firm. As well as staving off the threats of dealmakers departing amid a period of thin corporate activity, the joint firm’s bosses must prove that the marriage is one of convenience rather than desperation.