Cadwalader to Merge With Hogan Lovells, Creating Powerhouse (1)

New York’s Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft is merging with Hogan Lovells, uniting Wall Street’s oldest firm with a transatlantic powerhouse.

The combined firm, to be called Hogan Lovells Cadwalader, offers a lifeline for Cadwalader, which saw a slew of partner exits and has been seeking a merger partner for months. The departures included more than 30 partners this year, with key losses of leaders in corporate and finance.

Hogan Lovells has served as the landing spot before for troubled firms. It absorbed more than 30 partners from now-defunct Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in 2023. Hogan CEO Miguel Zaldivar said at the time the Stroock acquisitions were “definitely not the end of our growth plan for New York.”

Big Law has seen a string of tie-ups as firms seek scale in a bid to compete with other growing rivals that conduct bidding wars for top talent. The Hogan-Cadwalader merger will be the largest combination between law firms in history, with an expected $3.6 billion in revenue and a seat among the top five firms globally by revenue, according to the firms’ leaders.

The merger is “history in the making” and will create “a truly global elite firm,” Zaldivar said in an interview Thursday. The combined firm will collect about $2 billion in revenue from the Americas alone, he said.

He will serve as the combined firm’s CEO, while Cadwalader co-managing partners, Wesley Misson and Patrick Quinn, will occupy seats on the international management committee. The goal is to hammer out agreement details early next year, secure partner votes and finalize the combination by mid-2026.

“We’re bringing together two historic firms that are going to be dominant in all the financial centers in the world,” Misson said.

Zaldivar said the firms’ plan is to for the new firm to absorb all lawyers and staff from Cadwalader, unless any client ethical conflicts make it impossible to integrate certain practices.

Hogan’s Leader

The merger with Cadwalader fulfills one of Zaldivar’s strategic objectives: to round out Hogan Lovell’s bench in New York in litigation, private equity, and finance. As CEO, one of his goals has been for the firm to be perceived as “deeply connected to the New York market,” he said in 2023.

He took the leadership reins in 2020, and the firm re-elected him to the chief executive role for a term starting last year that runs through mid-2028. The firm surpassed $3 million in profits per equity partner for the first time last year, a goal Zaldivar set when he took the leadership role.

The roots of Hogan Lovells go back more than a century. Lovell, White & King was founded in London in 1899 and Frank J. Hogan started a practice in Washington five years later. Hogan & Hartson merged with Lovells in 2010 and has more than 2,800 lawyers practicing in more than 18 countries, according to its website.

Cadwalader, founded the same year President George Washington was elected to a second term, is known in the areas of fund finance and securitization. However, it slid down the revenue rankings over the last decade and came under fire for striking a deal with President Donald Trump to provide $100 million in free legal services in order to avoid a punitive executive order.

The firm in September added a second managing partner, Misson, leader of the fund finance practice, to run the firm alongside Patrick Quinn, a corporate lawyer whom the firm named managing partner a decade ago. At the combined firm, Misson will serve as global managing partner of the finance practice and Quinn will serve as global managing partner for client and practice innovation.

Cadwalader hired Davis Polk & Wardwell—now a leading adviser on law firm mergers—to advise it on the deal. Davis Polk also served as Shearman & Sterling’s outside counsel in its 2024 merger with Allen & Overy and is advising Ashurst in its tie-up with Perkins Coie, according to firm announcements.

Thursday’s merger announcement comes about four months after another storied New York firm, Schulte Roth & Zabel, combined with McDermott Will & Emery. Schulte, like Cadwalader, was known for its work in a narrow category of practices and faced pressure from rapidly growing rivals.

Chicago-founded Winston & Strawn and London’s Taylor Wessing said Dec. 15 that the firms plan to merge next year. A transatlantic tie-up of Ashurst LLP and Perkins Coie is also slated to close next year.