Daily Diary

Love is in the air

Posted 28/02/2007 by The Daily Diary

The craze for consolidation that continues to excite the world’s offshore elite means a body of merger-based management-speak is steadily building up.

Appropriately enough just a fortnight after St Valentine’s Day, the latest transatlantic tie-up - between Mourant de Feu & Jeune and Quin & Hampson - provides a heart-warming story of long-distance love at first sight.

“The takeover – sorry, merger – happened very quickly,” the chief executive cupid of the larger party confided to The Diary last week. “The initial meeting was like a first date. We had dinner to decide whether we liked each other and wanted to see each other again. I quickly invited my ‘date’ to ‘meet the parents’ and to my delight, they invited me to ‘meet the parents’ too.

“Our dating was hugely successful,” he nudge-nudge-wink-winked as the cries of a tortured metaphor filled the room, “but not that successful...”

The Diary sincerely hopes most mergers are not the result of management sleeping its way to success – giving the phrase ‘dirty money’ a whole new meaning for our offshore friends.

Mind you, it might explain Clifford Chance’s fatal attraction to the temptingly named Rogers & Wells.