“I liked the deal. I still love the deal. I love to close the deal,” Dennis Agnew enthuses from the Upper Mount Street offices of Squire Patton Boggs, the global law firm he has been chosen to lead in Ireland. We are about an hour into our conversation and the newly minted managing partner is in full flow about his induction into corporate law, M&A specifically.

Turns out Agnew is a deals man to the core. All kinds of deals.

Yes, money is king. Agnew likes nothing better than to squeeze a multi-million private equity corporate transaction across the line but that’s not what he’s talking about right now. This is about something more human. “I love doing deals where you’re in the room with people who’ve built something themselves and have now maybe sold their business,” he says. Like Reward Catering, the Ward family-owned food truck and trailer manufacturers that started from an ice cream kiosk in Bray and sold for around €13 million to Sweden’s Teqnion group last year. “These guys are in their twenties. I think they went to Tallaght RTC. They’re very very self-made. They’re ideas guys which I admire as well. They’re entrepreneurs,” he says.

“At the meeting, there were the two brothers. Then they brought in their siblings. Then their parents came in and there was just a flush of pride when I said, ‘congratulations you are now millionaires’. The mother had tears in her eyes. I mean I haven’t been at many closings where I just felt good. Everyone in the room felt good. They were good guys and good guys had done well. If you can’t get a little bit emotional about that, there’s something wrong with you. I’ve done way bigger deals but that was a great deal to be involved in.”

Later I listen back to the recording of our conversation to see if Agnew speeds up or raises his voice when talking about transactions that excite him. He doesn’t. He maintains a relaxed patter. “You should never forget as a lawyer or an accountant, the deal isn’t about you,” he tells me. “You’re there to facilitate the deal. You get to help them. But that’s what you are, you are help. It’s them, not you.”

The SPB agenda

Last November, the US-headquartered Squire Patton Boggs announced Agnew as managing partner for Ireland at the same time it broke the news it was opening a Dublin office. It is a natural fit. Mergers and acquisitions will take top billing in the Irish practice and Agnew, a seasoned M&A professional who comes to the job direct from Pinsent Masons, has previous experience in bedding down a satellite office of an international practice. Prior to Pinsents, he worked at Byrne Wallace and A&L Goodbody.

He also happens to have an Irish-American background. In a post-interview message this week, he tells me he has been meeting with the Cleveland and North East Ohio Business Society who are on a business development trip to Ireland off the back of the new Aer Lingus direct route starting last Friday. They are speaking with Irish companies who are considering making Cleveland their US base. Squire Patton Boggs opened its first offices in the US in 1890 in Cleveland and Dublin is the firm’s latest office so there is a nice bit of symmetry there.

Previously I caught up with Agnew at the tail end of a busy launch schedule that culminated in an opening party in early May at the National Gallery attended by Finance Minister Michael McGrath, attorney general Rossa Fanning, and Stephen Mahon, Squire Patton Boggs’ global managing partner of clients and strategy, followed by drinks in the newly opened Sin Bin sports bar on Merrion Square. Agnew has been jumping through hoops to get the show on the road from a tax, banking, and regulatory perspective with the firm’s license to practice only arriving from the Law Society two days before the launch.

My first impressions of Agnew are of a to-the-point operator with a natural ability to click with people. It has been a hectic few weeks but it doesn’t show on him. Ten minutes before the interview is due to begin, he spots me and Shane the photographer hovering on the pavement outside the firm’s temporary offices on Upper Mount Street and ushers us inside, running out in shirt sleeves to get coffee from the cafe downstairs.

Photos done, we get stuck into talking about Squire Patton Boggs’ Dublin agenda; a hard focus on mergers and acquisitions, with a sprinkling of corporate advisory work for client “stickiness”.

“It’s usually an international company buying an Irish company, or an Irish company doing an acquisition with an international piece to it,” he says of the M&A piece. Repeat work is not a feature of M&A so the best a law practice can hope for is a client referral or to assist a client down the road in an overseas acquisition. 

By way of example, he talks about UK private equity house Synova, headed up by David Menton. “He’s very polished, a really nice guy with an intriguing backstory. He founded the fund as an Irishman who went to college overseas, and he established the fund during a challenging period, around the early 2010s, I believe. He has a great story about how he went to the wire and got through it and now has grown. Since then, he has done a whole load of acquisitions,” he says.

“I did one for him where he bought an accountancy firm in Limerick, which in turn was a platform for an acquisition in Amsterdam. They engaged our services and we twinned with their Amsterdam office to do the Dutch piece. But the primary relationship remains with you, it’s you they want to sense check things off and ensure everything is on track.”

Becoming a valued voice

“More than 60 per cent of M&A activity emanates from the United States, and Squire Patton Boggs is a US-headquartered firm and that’s where most of our profits come from.”

The Synova deals were from Agnew’s time in Pinsent Masons. He was a founding partner of the firm in Ireland back in 2018 and says the partners were fine about him leaving for Squire Patton Boggs, bar some concerns that he might poach their staff.

“In Pinsent’s, we had what we called Atlas clients, big, big companies already established in Ireland. From my perspective, they were more than likely not seeking M&A opportunities within Ireland. Therefore, they weren’t the type of clients I would typically approach to win work from,” he says. 

Speaking of staff, I ask him if M&A law work is a little more personality-driven than other forms of legal work. Agnew doesn’t answer yes or no. He prefers to illustrate what is of value to him through a story about his new hire for SQP, George Kennedy, most recently of Philip Lee solicitors. 

“Very few people from my school went to college.”

“There’s a company called H&MV Engineering, led by a gentleman named PJ Flanagan. George had a close working relationship with them, especially during his time in Limerick. Throughout their journey, H&MV Engineering stuck with George as their trusted advisor. When I spoke with the firm while I was considering bringing George on board, I asked if they had come under pressure to switch to a larger firm as they grew. They said they had but they resisted it because they firmly believed that George had their back during negotiations. When you’re hiring, that’s fantastic, it’s music to your ears. We often refer to that type of relationship as being an ‘outside counsel’. I have relationships like this. You are not on the clock every time they ring you and it is not always a legal question. You are seen as a trusted advisor.”

In such scenarios, Agnew says he likes to be a straight shooter rather than give caveated ‘on the one hand, on the other hand but ultimately, it’s your decision’ advice. “People do that. But we know it’s their decision. They want to know what you would do. So you try and put yourself in their shoes and say – this is what my advice to you would be.”

The Squire poach

It was Agnew’s work on Payroc’s acquisition of payment platform Worldnet last year that really got him noticed by Squire Patton Boggs, whose lawyers had worked opposite him on an earlier deal involving Irish financial services giant Waystone. 

“I received a call last summer, and it’s funny how things happen, if something is meant for you, it’s meant for you. Normally, I wouldn’t answer an unsolicited call because they usually leave a message but this time, a split second after hanging up with a UK client, the phone rang again with a UK number starting with 0044 so I picked it up. It turned out to be a recruiter representing Squire Patton Boggs.”

Agnew’s immediate reaction was to decline the job offer because he was happy at Pinsent Masons. The recruiter suggested having a conversation before making a final decision. They arranged for him to speak with a senior representative of the firm in Dublin and later London. Things progressed from there.

A draw for Agnew was Squire Patton Boggs’ strong US platform, which was missing from London-based Pinsent Masons. “That’s a big miss if you’re an international M&A lawyer. More than 60 per cent of M&A activity emanates from the United States, and Squire Patton Boggs is a US-headquartered firm and that’s where most of our profits come from. Living in Ireland, you understand the close bond we have with the US. Even this week, when our people were over from the UK, they were surprised by the number of US companies with a presence in Ireland and at how close the bonds are. We have seen with Joe Biden’s visit in recent weeks just how embedded we are with the United States,” he says.

“I previously worked in the United States and my family are Irish-Americans in reverse in some ways, so the US piece was something we can leverage well. Joining Squire Patton Boggs was more of a pull factor than a push factor from Pinsent Masons.”

The Irish American in reverse

Agnew is the son of Irish parents who emigrated in their teens to the US in the late 1950s, like many of their generation. His dad grew up on a farm that straddled the Louth-Armagh border and his mother came from a farming family in Co Clare. “Both of them absolutely loved the States at that time, in the 60s when Kennedy was President,” he says. There were pictures of JFK on the wall growing up with an older brother first in Queens, New York, and later in Swords, Dublin when the family returned to Ireland in the seventies. Back home, his parents ran a local corner shop, the kind that existed before Spar became ubiquitous. It was hard work but they made a success of it.

“We opened our shop 365 days a year. My kids laugh because they say I make it sound like Charles Dickens. But I would have started to work quite regularly from the age of probably ten. I say seven or eight but my Dad says ten. He says it gets younger every time he hears it.”

Early jobs included cutting off the mastheads of unsold newspapers to return to suppliers and making up 10p bags of penny sweets.

“Very few people from my school went to college. But for as long as I can remember, the way my parents had it, I didn’t even really think that it wasn’t an option. It was very much you go to college. And that’s probably the dynamic that you have now. But it wasn’t necessarily the dynamic in the eighties.”

In UCD he did Business and Legal studies to keep his options open but being better with words than numbers he veered towards law and ended up taking an offer of an apprenticeship with A&L Goodbody. Pretty much from day one, he felt he had met his tribe. “I really liked working in A&L. And corporate was the engine room. I liked the deal. I still love the deal. I love to close the deal. I just love the whole dynamic of the commercial and that’s what is beautiful, I think, about corporate M&A, I’ve never done a deal that’s exactly like the previous deal. Every day is a new day. I don’t think I could do a job where it’s the same yesterday as it was today.”

“If you were to say ‘I am going to do just tech M&A’, you are ignoring the fact you don’t know what’s going to land on your desk.”

He says his Dad knew the name of every customer who came into the shop and who their children were, and could over a 12-hour shift repeat the same joke over and over as if for the first time. The repetition made Agnew groan when he was younger but he appreciates now that it was a gift, just not one he shares with his father. He prefers a roster of new challenges.

The obvious lure for SPB in hiring Agnew is his prior experience in opening a satellite office of an international law firm. Given a choice between someone who has successfully handled similar responsibilities in the past and someone who hasn’t, it is natural the firm would choose the person with a proven track record. Agnew finds himself back at the beginning of a new journey only this time he is more confident about what lies ahead. “If you do the right things repeatedly, and put in the effort, you will get there eventually. If I do what I did in Pinsent’s, but with bells and whistles on for the United States side of things, then it should be a success.”

Meeting the private equity piece

The bells and whistles are the deals that will land on his desk as part of a global firm with 17 US offices (42 worldwide). “You still have to work at it because you have to form a relationship with the US partners. They worked very hard to build that client relationship themselves. They want to know that when they give work to me and Ireland that it’s in safe hands. They have to come to know you, trust you, and like you,” he says.

Part two of the bells and whistles is the private equity piece. “Private equity was strong in Pinsent’s, but in Squire Patton Boggs you would probably say it’s deeper. That’s how we’ve really grown in the last number of years. It’s the strength of our private equity. And then the number of introductions I’ve been given to UK PE that are looking at Ireland is probably a multiple of what it was in Pinsent’s. But to be fair, that’s also because the interest from UK PE has increased hugely in the last couple of years.”

I ask Agnew about the impact of changing market conditions on PE and what that means for an incoming legal player like Squire Patton Boggs. He says to some degree we are still in a scenario where the investment money has already been raised. Even leaving that aside, he argues confidence in the future of the Irish market remains high. 

“This is such a small market and the fact is most Irish entrepreneurs, especially in the sectors that interest private equity, already think internationally when they form which isn’t the same necessarily as in the UK. Many of them have big corporate experience before starting out on their own. UK PE says they really love the can-do attitude they see from Irish entrepreneurs and how plugged-in they are to overseas markets and sectors.”

The nature of the investment has changed though. “A few years ago, private equity was focused mainly on tech, but that’s not the case anymore. For example, Synova acquired a financial services and accountancy firm, which is not something you would typically associate with private equity. During my time at Pinsents, we did a whole series of private equity deals where they were grouping together veterinary practices. The UK did that and to some extent, they’ve exhausted that market.”

If UK PE moves in on Irish interests and then exits, probably to a bigger US PE house, Agnew wants SPB to be part of that loop.

“It’s not a volume play. We don’t have to be the biggest in the Irish market, we just have to do a number of good deals that adds to our overall picture. In terms of my objectives, I would like to add to the profitability of Squire Patton Boggs. I want Ireland to be a net contributor to that. That’s maybe different to saying what I want for Ireland. It is what I want for us as an international practice, and that’s why we’re here.”

Are you expecting more or less activity in the current climate?

‘You would expect the volume to go down. But not sufficiently yet that I’d be concerned about it. And particularly for us, because we’re not a volume play. If you need a huge amount of volume of M&A deals, maybe you’d be looking at it more closely. But look at how many changes have been in the market in the last 20 years,” he says.

“And the law firms have done quite well on that. We all pivoted during the recession years but we could have pivoted into loan sales. It was very different but it was still M&A. Just a very different M&A. The due diligence wing disappeared overnight. It was like – it is what it is, give me an offer. It was great if you were acting for the liquidators.

“It wasn’t the car crash it might have appeared to be from the outside, at least in the larger firms. If you look at the trajectory of employee numbers in the big four and five during those years, by 2012, it had fallen back into place.”

The differentiator

Squire Patton Boggs currently has four solicitors in Dublin with support from two partners in London. It is looking to recruit up to ten lawyers in year one, and maybe fifty in the long run. Specific revenue targets for partners in Ireland have not been copper-fastened, Agnew says. Internationally, the firm pulled in over $1 billion dollars in revenue last year and growth is the priority. The focus is on catching up with even bigger international firms. ‘Up and to the right’ is the SQP mantra.

“From day one in our conversations, Steve [Mahon] said has to add to our profitability and add to our revenue. He’s not interested in Ireland being a drag. That’s music to my ears.

“Ireland is such a factor in international M&A. Whether it be a subsidiary, or a company in the chain when we’re competing against the international law firms for a transaction that’s across jurisdictions, having Ireland may be a differentiator for us as opposed to the Irish domestic law firms.”

I ask Agnew to elaborate on what is lively in Ireland investment-wise beyond tech, life sciences, and financial services. Food trucks, he replies referring to Reward Catering’s acquisition by Teqnion only four years after it was founded. It is not meant to be a facetious comment. His point is that he doesn’t want to pigeonhole Irish entrepreneurs into any one sector. As an M&A lawyer, he believes in following the work.

Times and trends change. The first deal he worked on as a lawyer was in the late 1990s selling a company called News Extracts which put together news clippings every morning for professional services firms, a venture rendered redundant by the internet.

“I’ve explained this to the UK and to the US. If you were to say ‘I am going to do just tech M&A’, you are ignoring the fact you don’t know what’s going to land on your desk. It tends to be you that you are given a revenue target by the firm, and you have to make that target, by hook or by crook. At the end of the year, luckily for me, I usually have made that target and exceeded it, but in terms of your business plan, it might end up looking very different from where you thought it was going.”