Clyde & Co and BLM agree merger

Global law firm Clyde & Co and UK-headquartered insurance specialist BLM will merge, after partners of both firms voted in favour of a deal.

The new company will retain the Clyde & Co brand with the merger completing in July.

The combined firm will have annual global revenue of more than £700m, 5,000 staff and offices in more than 60 cities across the world.

BLM is a UK and Ireland-based law firm focused on insurance risk and commercial law, with a particular strength in casualty, personal injury, healthcare and professional liability.

Clyde & Co specialises in sectors that underpin global trade and commercial activity, such as insurance, infrastructure, aviation, energy, marine and natural resources.

BLM will now become part of Clyde & Co’s global insurance practice that serves insurers and their clients.

Following the merger, the practice now will offer a broader range of UK casualty insurance expertise. This will include advice on catastrophic injury, disease, employers’ and public liability, abuse and neglect, fraud, motor claims, and property damage and recovery. This will be supplemented by a costs team, forensic accountants, investigators and other specialists.

James Cooper, Clyde & Co partner and chair of its Global Insurance Practice Group, said: “We have long sought to increase the scale of our UK casualty insurance practice though a merger so we can provide the full scope of services, technology, data analytics and innovation that clients in this dynamic part of the market require. Once we started speaking to BLM, we quickly realised that we shared the same approach to client service, had a complementary client roster and similar ambitions in this space. This combination will also boost our regional UK presence and strengthen our healthcare and professional liability offerings too.”

Chris Murray, partner and head of casualty at Clyde & Co, added: “This is a really exciting move for us and our clients in the casualty space. It is such a fast-moving and innovative part of the insurance market, and combining with BLM will allow us to invest even more in the technology and innovation that our clients are asking for. We will also have the ability to harness the largest dataset in the market to provide invaluable [management information] and data analysis to clients. But crucially, it is a merger founded on a shared approach to quality and client service, and that will remain at the heart of our offering.”

Clyde & Co recently launched a new online platform and suite of digital tools to help insurers speed up casualty insurance claims handling, with the aim of delivering the lowest overall indemnity spend to clients.

The company said this will now compliment BLM’s suite of online analytics, case management and communications tools, which the firm first launched in 2019.