Select from the ten charts provided below to research the Canadian law firms with the largest number of lawyers in the country or in a particular city or region. Each of the columns in each of the charts is sortable.
- Select the “Firm Name” column to sort firm names alphabetically or in reverse alpha order.
- Select a city to sort the results numerically from the firm with the largest number of lawyers in a particular city to the firm with the smallest number, or vice versa.
- Select the last column in each chart to sort by total number of lawyers either in descending or ascending order.
Borden Ladner Gervais LLP
Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG), a preeminent full-service, Canadian law firm, is driven to help achieve the best possible results for all our clients. With more than 750 lawyers, intellectual property agents and other professionals in five offices, BLG provides corporate, litigation and intellectual property solutions to a wide range of clients nationally and internationally. A bilingual English-French firm, BLG excels under both the common and civil law systems in Canada.
Understanding your business and how legal changes affect you today and tomorrow is BLG's business. Like you, BLG believes that nothing less than achieving results through excellence will do. This commitment to service has resulted in the frequent recognition of many of BLG's legal professionals at home and abroad. In addition to appearing in The Canadian Legal Lexpert® Directory and The Lexpert®/American Lawyer Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada, BLG is featured consistently in other national and international legal publications, including The Best Lawyers in Canada 2014 and Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business.
In addition, BLG provides insight and clarity to regional, national and multinational corporations across a variety of business sectors. BLG is also proud to represent public institutions such as universities, governments and governmental agencies, and health care facilities, as well as private business, trade and charitable groups. The Firm also takes great pride in the communities in which its professionals and staff live and work. BLG supports a variety of activities by providing pro bono legal services, fundraising and volunteer programs, such as the BLG Reads to Kids Program.
Canada’s foreign investment review regime has been in the international spotlight in recent years, particularly in the aftermath of several high-profile transactions that generated intense policy and media debates. Most recently, in 2014, 'tax inversion' transactions involving Canadian companies first increased before then declining following a shift in U.S. tax policy. This tempered somewhat a nascent debate about the advantages and disadvantages of being a jurisdiction to which U.S. acquirers look for inversion partners. This trend culminated with the CAD12.5 billion 3G Capital / Burger King / Tim Hortons transaction, which was ultimately approved.
Previously, it was undoubtedly the large, high-profile resource transactions that captured all the attention. These transactions included, for example, CNOOC’s approved acquisition of Nexen, BHP’s rejected acquisition of Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, Rio Tinto’s approved acquisition of Alcan, and a number of additional investments by Asian and Middle Eastern state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the energy sector, with a focus on the oil sands. Investments by SOEs have become the source of considerable controversy, particularly as they accelerated in recent times, both in terms of number and size.
Notwithstanding these debates and controversies, it is beyond dispute that Canada remains open to foreign investment in broad terms. Indeed, only the very largest transactions – representing only a few percentage points of total deal activity – are subject to foreign investment review at all. And of the small subset of transactions that are subject to foreign investment review, only a small fraction are in any way contentious, and even a smaller fraction still have been blocked – a mere handful in total over the course of decades. Nevertheless, the perception has developed in recent years that Canada has adopted a more aggressive posture in reviewing foreign investments. While there is some merit to this view and there have been several recent developments that give credence to it (described below), our overall perspective is that Canada remains open to foreign investment, even as the source of those investments has and will continue to shift from traditional OECD countries to less traditional, emerging markets, with which Canadians are less familiar.
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State-owned enterprises
In 2013, the government amended the Investment Canada Act, the primary piece of legislation governing foreign investment into Canada, to give itself broader discretion in deciding whether an SOE investment should be subject to a foreign investment review. Whereas traditional, non-SOE investors generally benefit from bright-line rules determining whether an approval is required, SOE investors are now subject to less structured tests. On its face, the definition of SOE captures companies in which foreign governments have only minority interests falling short of control, and SOEs acquiring less than control of Canadian companies may nevertheless be subject to review, which is in marked contrast to non-SOE investors. Concerns have been expressed that these less certain rules may chill foreign investment, including in the Canadian energy sector. That having been said, the fears associated with the new, toughened stance may not be justified. The fact remains that, to our knowledge, Canada has never explicitly blocked a proposed SOE investment – SOEs with substantial energy assets in Canada now include CNOOC, Sinopec, Petrochina, China Investment Corp, Petronas, Korea National Oil Company, Korea Gas Corporation, INPEX Corporation, Statoil, PTTEP, Qatar Petroleum and TAQA. They all have substantial Canadian operations. In addition, if anything, there is an argument that SOEs have over-invested in Canada in recent years and that any slowdown in SOE-related activity is attributable to the changing economic fundamentals of the energy industry and has little to do with Canadian laws.
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