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CMS firms vote for closer alignment

12/02/2008

CMS partners have voted for closer integration and alignment between the nine CMS firms in a series of votes that ended at the first week of February.

Robert Derry-Evans, CMS Executive Partner, said, "With a strong national identity, and this quickening of our development, CMS is well placed to advise clients across Europe. Our commitment to our clients and to each other is to deliver consistent and high quality service across the whole of CMS. There is a great opportunity for us to develop a distinctive European offering."

CMS firms will be developing further common standards, processes and procedures including a new conflict of interest policy, in accordance with an agreed set of strategic priorities. The CMS firms will continue to operate as separate legal entities, under their existing names, reflecting their strong identities in their local markets. At the same time, greater emphasis will be given to the CMS brand and name, in order to promote CMS' European offering.

Dick Tyler, currently Managing Partner of CMS Cameron McKenna LLP, will step up to become Executive Partner of CMS when Robert Derry-Evans, who has held the position since 2003, retires in September 2008.

CMS was established in 1999 and today comprises nine CMS firms, employing over 2,000 lawyers, in 57 offices in 47 cities covering 26 jurisdictions (including an unrivalled presence in Central and Eastern Europe). Referral work across CMS has grown by nearly 30% annually, contributing to a combined fee income in 2007 of nearly €750 million.

The new CMS headquarters office is based in Frankfurt. The CMS Executive Team includes Director of Operations, Matthew Gorman and Director of Brand Marketing, Peter Sommer.

Note to editors:

For further information, please contact:
Robert Derry-Evans, CMS Executive Partner
T +49 69 71 701 500
Peter Sommer, CMS Director of Brand Marketing
T +49 69 71 701 500

CMS member firms are: CMS Adonnino Ascoli & Cavasola Scamoni (Italy); CMS Albiñana & Suárez de Lezo (Spain); CMS Bureau Francis Lefebvre (France); CMS Cameron McKenna LLP (UK); CMS DeBacker (Belgium); CMS Derks Star Busmann (Netherlands); CMS von Erlach Henrici (Switzerland); CMS Hasche Sigle (Germany); and CMS Reich-Rohrwig Hainz (Austria).

CMS is one of the top five legal services providers in Europe measured by fee income, number of offices, number of partners and total headcount. Bloomberg's latest European mid-market and advisory ranked CMS fifth for both deal volume and value (for deals valued between US$50m and US$500m), advising on 57 deals totaling US$11.7 billion in 2007.

Dick Tyler has been Managing Partner of CMS Cameron McKenna since 2000. He trained and qualified at McKenna & Co, one of the two firms that merged in 1997 to form Cameron McKenna, and became a Partner in the firm's corporate practice in 1992. In November 2007, CMS Cameron McKenna announced that Duncan Weston would succeed Dick Tyler as Managing Partner on 1 May 2008.

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