McClure Naismith admits to merger talks

Commercial law firm McClure Naismith is in merger talks as its banking department struggles to compete with bigger practices, its executive chairman has admitted.

The disclosure by Robin Shannan to the Sunday Herald comes as the 28 partner firm, which has offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, faces possible financial penalties due to a seven month delay in filing its accounts as a limited liability partnership at Companies House.

Mr Shannan emphasised that the firm was still trading and that "some parts of the business are doing very well", but conceded that its banking practice had been hit by the financial crash and recession, and the firm needed to scale up "in order to compete effectively" in the market.

McClure Naismith has blamed "technical issues" on its failure to lodge accounts, but no date has yet been announced as to when these will finally be released.

Earlier this year the LLP faced being struck off the Companies House register due to a failure to confirm that it remained a trading entity, an error which it put down to misreading an official notice.