Olaniwun Ajayi recruited a former HSF Kramer Johannesburg office managing partner into its London office in July 2026. Read against three other moves, it describes a structural change in how African firms compete.
Key points
- Edward Baring joined Olaniwun Ajayi’s London office as a partner on 7 July 2026, moving from HSF Kramer where he was Johannesburg office managing partner.
- Olaniwun Ajayi opened its London office in 2021 and has added senior capacity in stages.
- Bowmans absorbed a 14-partner A&O Shearman Johannesburg team in January 2025.
- Asafo & Co. merged with Stork Avocats in February 2026 to deepen French and Francophone capability.
- The common thread: African firms are buying execution capacity rather than paying for referral relationships.
One hire, read properly
On 7 July 2026, Olaniwun Ajayi announced the appointment of Edward Baring as a partner in its London-based international practice. Baring had been managing partner of Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer’s Johannesburg office, with more than two decades of emerging-markets finance experience across debt, equity and leveraged finance.
A single lateral hire is not a market event. But four moves in eighteen months, by three different firms, describe something coherent:
| Date | Firm | Move | What it buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 2025 | Bowmans | 14-partner team from A&O Shearman Johannesburg, including Gerhard Rudolph | Senior South African banking, energy, mining, infrastructure and disputes capacity in one transaction |
| February 2026 | Asafo & Co. | Merger with Stork Avocats, Paris | French-law execution for OHADA-zone and Francophone transactions |
| February 2026 | Asafo & Co. | Benoit Diouf promoted to partner in Abidjan | Local Abidjan partner capacity rather than Paris-managed coverage |
| July 2026 | Olaniwun Ajayi | Edward Baring joins London international practice | English-law finance execution for Nigerian client mandates |
Each is the same decision expressed differently: stop paying for capability you need on every transaction, and start owning it.
The referral economics that changed
Historically, an African firm’s route to an international transaction ran through a referral relationship. A London firm sends the English-law work to a magic-circle competitor and the local-law work to Lagos. The Lagos firm gets a fee, a client relationship it does not control, and a ceiling.
Three things broke that arrangement.
1. African clients got bigger. A Nigerian or Kenyan borrower raising US$700m no longer needs a foreign relationship to be introduced to a foreign market. It needs counsel who can run the whole mandate. When Bank of Industry establishes a US$1bn multi-currency instrument programme, the issuer is a Nigerian institution and the legal question is who can execute the financing documentation, not who can make an introduction.
2. Pan-African firms became credible domestic incumbents. Bowmans does not need a referral for South African work; it is the referral. ALN Kenya ran the Ethio Telecom IPO out of Nairobi capacity. When a firm already occupies the domestic position, “international” is the only capacity gap left to close.
3. The arbitrage narrowed. The historical premium international firms charged for English-law execution on African transactions has compressed. If the premium is smaller, the value of owning the capability rather than renting it goes up.
What each firm is actually building
Olaniwun Ajayi is building a two-capability firm: Nigerian law at scale (117 fee earners at the last attributable count) and English-law execution in London. The Dangote Refinery IPO, the Bank of Industry programme and the Seplat senior notes are all transactions where the Nigerian firm and the international firm could plausibly both be in the room. Owning London capacity means Olaniwun Ajayi can be both.
Bowmans is doing the opposite: it is building African breadth so deep that a client does not need to assemble a panel. Ten jurisdictions, and the Canal+/MultiChoice and Anglo Teck appointments show the strategy working at the top of the market.
Asafo & Co. is solving a different problem. Francophone African transaction work has historically been routed through Paris to a small set of boutique firms. Asafo & Co. is building the African-domiciled alternative, and the Stork Avocats merger plus a genuine Abidjan partner promotion is as much a credibility exercise as a capacity one.
The counter-argument, stated fairly
There is a case that this is a cycle, not a structural shift. Lateral hires are expensive, cultural integration of a 14-partner team is genuinely difficult, and a London office in a soft market is a cost centre that can outlive its strategy. Meridian’s own view is that the hire-level signal is real but the outcome is unproven. Our tracker will test it on a specific measure: whether these firms win named roles on cross-border mandates that would previously have been brought to them by an international firm. That is observable, and it is what we will publish.
The Meridian Briefing will follow this as a running series
“The London corridor” is a standing Meridian series. We will publish each new move as it is verified, and we will publish a twelve-month scorecard showing which firms converted capacity into mandates and which did not.
Related on Meridian
- The recapitalisation cycle is Nigeria’s most predictable legal mandate stream
- Francophone Africa is the biggest unclaimed coverage gap in the African legal market
- The Free Zone test: what the Dangote Refinery IPO actually asks of Nigeria’s legal market
- Olaniwun Ajayi LP firm profile
- Bowmans firm profile
- Asafo & Co. firm profile
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