ACCOUNTANCY LINKS: Landwell, E&Y maintain relationships

Landwell and E&Y Law - the international legal networks attached to giant accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young respectively - insisted this week that they would continue to operate as before in the wake of KLegal's uncoupling from KPMG.

The big-four accountancy practice announced this week that it is discontinuing its legal network, and KLegal's 60 offices and member firms internationally - including the London office and McGrigor Donald, the Scottish member - will form a new international grouping at arm's length from KPMG.

A KLegal spokesman said: 'The aim is to meet the requirements of the [US] Sarbanes-Oxley rules and to operate without restriction in the market place.'

KLegal will now re-brand, probably changing its name to McGrigor or McGrigors, the spokesman said.

A Landwell spokeswoman said: 'Landwell UK remains the correspondent law firm of PwC.

There are no plans to change this arrangement.

In other countries, a small minority of correspondent firms have separated in response to local regulatory requirements; however, the vast majority remain.'

The managing partner of Landwell's London office, Leon Flavell, said the firm does very little work for PwC's audit clients, and has not lost much work as a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which aims to ensure that auditors do not provide other advice to clients.

A spokesman for E&Y Law, said the firm would continue its strategy of having a full-service global multi-disciplinary practice (MDP) offering legal advice to non-audit clients.

'E&Y does not have member firms in the US or the UK,' the spokesman said, 'because we recognised that these markets were not particularly attuned to the MDP approach, and that the best approach in these markets was for us to have arm's-length relationships with firms.' City firm Tite & Lewis is E&Y Law's arm's-length UK member.

Jeremy Fleming