Despite Spanish M&A values dropping significantly in 2013 and amid the country’s continuing well-publicised debt crisis, two of Spain’s big four law firms have reported an uptick in turnover as a note of optimism returns to Europe’s fourth-largest jurisdiction.
Deal value in 2013 was down from $47.6bn to $32.2bn, according to mergermarket, but with a substantially improving pipeline post summer 2013, Uría Menéndez last month reported the strongest growth of the four: a 2.9% increase in revenues for 2013.
Slaughter and May’s Spanish referral partner saw its total revenues for 2013 increase to €185.4m, up from €180.2m the year before.
Uría managing partner Luis de Carlos told Legal Business: ‘The key to our results is Spain’s first steps to recovery, especially during the second half of the year. As international investors regained their confidence in the Iberian peninsula and started to look our way for interesting opportunities, Uría Menéndez managed to position itself at their side.
‘The difficult conditions have been ongoing now since 2008. For us they have become the playing field.’
Fernando Vives, Garrigues
‘The first two months of 2014 have followed the same positive trend established in the second semester of 2013, allowing us to be reasonably optimistic for the rest of the year.’
While litigation, employment and tax have remained ‘solid’, the firm’s corporate and M&A, real estate and capital markets teams had a particularly strong year in 2013, with work picking up especially after the summer.
Meanwhile, Cuatrecasas, Gonçalves Pereira, which in April 2012 announced its move to become an all-equity partnership, also reported a rise in turnover, up to €248m in 2013 from €245.6m the year before.
However, these positive results were not echoed at Garrigues, where turnover was down 1.7% to €331.9m, or Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, which also reported a drop in turnover, down 0.9% from €61.9m in 2012 to €60.7m last year.
Garrigues managing partner Fernando Vives pointed out that his firm achieved growth of 11.83% from 2008 to 2013, ‘almost 6% more than our closest competitor’.
‘The difficult conditions have been ongoing now since 2008. So, for us, they have become the playing field,’ Vives told Legal Business.
There has, he agrees, been an uptick in corporate work, including the recent €7.2bn acquisition by Vodafone of Spanish telecoms company Ono, in which Garrigues advised Ono.
‘Things are looking up. We mustn’t be overenthusiastic just yet, but investment is clearly finding its way back into Spain, international growth forecasts are all positive and rising, and deals are regaining a more stable pace.’