In addition, the five lawyers at Binchys' current London office will move to Maples and Calder's City offices in early December 2005. The merger will formally take effect from 16th January 2006.

The merger will add Irish law to Maples and Calder's capability to advise institutional clients on Cayman Islands, BVI, and Jersey law from offices in London, Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands, Dubai, the Cayman Islands, Jersey and now Dublin. The firm will have 6 partners, 14 lawyers and 15 staff in Dublin and a total of 140 lawyers worldwide.

Maples and Calder partner Julian Reddyhough will move to Dublin and will manage the new firm together with Binchys' senior partner Jennifer Caldwell.

Commenting on the merger, Binchys' senior partner Jennifer Caldwell said "We are very excited by this move. It will provide an extremely attractive proposition for our clients seeking advice across a range of jurisdictions, where we will now be able to offer a 24-hour capability. We believe that the quality of Maples and Calder's institutional client base, their expertise, people and systems plus their worldwide reputation will create effective synergies with our traditional corporate finance practice."

Maples and Calder's senior partner Anthony Travers said "We have followed the development of the Dublin market over a number of years and believe it provides an attractive base from which to play to our key strengths in the areas of hedge funds, mutual funds, private equity and structured finance. The various financial products that we have developed over many years will readily adapt to the Dublin legal and regulatory environment and, as we have found in other jurisdictions, we are likely to be highly cost competitive."

"Combining the Cayman Islands' traditional strength as an international financial centre with a European onshore base through which financial structures can access double tax treaty networks and which provides the European passport for cross-border marketing of debt and equity securities is compelling from the business perspective. Whilst law firm mergers can be challenging there is no doubt in my mind that in Binchys the chemistry, culture and the business case are absolutely right. We believe that we have established a comprehensive global platform and we anticipate great results."
The move comes as Maples and Calder continues to expand. The firm's London and Hong Kong offices have doubled in size in the last two years whilst in September 2005 the firm opened a fully staffed transactional and execution office in Dubai.

Maples and Calder is the the largest law firm in the Cayman Islands. The firm is ranked No. 1 in the legal counsel by funds and by total assets league tables published in the HedgeWorld Service Provider Directory & Guide (2004) and is ranked No. 1 in the 2004 europrospectus.com tables of structured debt deals as lawyers to the issuers with a 32.5% market share.