Dentons’ combination with Buenos Aires firm Rattagan Macchiavello Arocena has gone live.

The deal, which was first announced in September 2019, adds a key jurisdiction to the global giant’s 24-office regional network across Latin America and the Caribbean, the largest of any law firm.

The office, which lists 21 professionals on the Dentons website, will be known as Dentons Rattagan Macchiavello Arocena. 

The full service firm was founded in 2005 by corporate specialist Michael Rattagan, managing partner Juan Arocena and the late Gabriel Macchiavello after they quit Allende & Brea to go it alone. 

Arocena will continue in his management role. 

Rattagan said: “We are very proud and terribly excited with this distinction. As part of Dentons our Buenos Aires office will now have at hand’s reach all of the knowledge, talent, best practices and state-of-the-art technology to better support our clients, allowing them to do business throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and, quite literally, in any other place of the world."

Elliott Portnoy, global chief executive of Dentons, said the launch would enable the firm to meet client needs in a national market seen as a regional priority, while Joe Andrew, the firm’s global chair, said the move had proceeded notwithstanding the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Jorge Alers, Dentons’ regional CEO, added: "Argentina has a number of exceptional legal service providers but Rattagan Macchiavello Arocena stood out for its leadership and innovative and forward-looking thinking”.

Dentons embarked on its Latin American expansion when it opened in Mexico and Colombia in 2015 and then Peru in 2017. Last year, it absorbed Norton Rose Fulbright’s former practice in Venezuela, opened Dentons Larraín Rencoret in Chile and announced its combinations with Uruguay’s Jiménez de Arechaga Viana & Brause, which went live last month, and Rattagan Macchiavello Arocena.

This year, Dentons has turned its sights on the US, where it wants to build a network of firms covering the entire US under Project Golden Spike.

Its combination with the first two members of this network — Dentons Bingham Greenebaum and Dentons Cohen & Grigsby — went live in January.

The firm now stands just outside the top ten legal brands identified in the Acritas 2020 Global Elite Law Firm Brand Index.

Further reading

LatAm round-up: Kennedys grows in Peru and McDermott hires private client team from DLA Piper — Polsinelli and Herbert Smith Freehills also make Latin America-focused appointments, in Miami and London respectively