But the stars are Bruckhaus and Gleiss. Unconvinced by Clifford Chance, Bruckhaus insists that it is concentrating on extending its already outstanding domestic market position. Younger lawyers at the firm, many of whom have spent time in the US, say there is no need to rush, but peer wistfully across the Atlantic. After its letdown with Stibbe Simont, according to some Gleiss is ready to try again. Although the big names get the attention, the most important developments this year took place in the Mittelstand.
German lawyers like to pride themselves on their work for world-famous domestic corporates.
But in private, most of them will admit that no firm, not even those at the pinnacle of the market, can afford to ignore the group of mid-size traditional companies known as the Mittelstand. Set up after the war, this core of German industrial exporting power provides not only lucrative fees in its own right, but is undergoing recapitalisation on a scale which no one could have predicted five years ago, bringing a boom of transaction work to law firms. No country in Europe has seen as much of an explosion of the capital markets as Germany. As the suffocatingly close relationships with house banks loosen up, Mittelstand clients have a huge range of business options, allowing the private equity market to develop in spectacular style. However, the bulk of the work goes to small and mid-size firms dotted throughout the country, some in places that even German lawyers have never heard of.