With the financial reporting season in full swing, Taylor Wessing has unveiled its latest results, becoming a €500m firm for the first time.
The firm experienced slower growth compared to the previous season, as it did not achieve double-digit growth as it did in 2021/2022. The firm saw a 4% increase in global revenue to £439m in this year’s financial results, up from £420.6m last year, which its highest recorded international revenue to date.
It witnessed a similar increase in UK revenue, which went up 4% to reach £227.1m, surpassing the figure of £219.3m reported for the 2021/2022 period.
UK profit, however, dropped by 12% from £93m to £87.1m, but it is still the second highest on record for the firm. The firm did not disclose some figures, but PEP is estimated to be £809,000 and RPL in excess of £500,000.
UK managing partner Shane Gleghorn (pictured) told Legal Business: ‘We’re delighted to see growth in both the UK business and international business. We’re very pleased we managed to maintain growth in those circumstances where the markets, certainly in the UK, were more muted in relation to fundraising and corporate work.’
Talking about the latest developments, he continued: ‘We’ve got big investment in our new premises in London, and we’ve moved into new premises in Cambridge and Dublin. There’s been quite a lot of lateral hiring and promotions taking place, particularly across London, Dubai and Dublin. We’ve been growing out our IP offering and broadly speaking, the plan is to create a holistic IP offering across Europe. We’ve started to implement that, and it has been a very significant point of investment for us.’
This year marked the launch of Taylor Wessing’s latest three-year strategy, following the introduction of its previous strategy in 2020, which Gleghorn said resulted in significant revenue growth in the UK, increasing from approximately £157m to over £227m, a growth rate of 44%. Additionally, global revenue also increased from around £365m to approximately £438m, a growth rate of over 20%.
Commenting on the fall in UK profit this year, Gleghorn said: ‘We do anticipate that the profit will improve next year, but it wasn’t an unexpected turn of events for the profit to be flat at this year. We anticipated that the market would be slower in some of our core areas. We are very confident about our profit position because, when you view it in the context of the preceding two years of growth, it is still the second-highest profit that we have ever earned.’
Discussing which practice areas had made the greater contribution, he continued: ‘It’s fair to say it was across the board contributions. In London, patents, private equity, private client, disputes work, and employment have all had strong years. Tech and life sciences have also had a strong year, but there’s no doubt that the second half of the financial year was more challenging for most firms who focus on that area.’
