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Ashurst revamps partner capital system

News that Ashurst is adopting a capital contribution system for partners this year finally brings the City International firm in line with the rest of its major rivals in the City.

As part of the reorganisation, each Ashurst equity partner will be asked to pay in a one-off capital contribution based on the number of equity points they hold. Currently, the firm does not ask partners to pay in capital, but retains a percentage of partner profits each year that is then distributed to partners when they leave or retire. The move is a bid to align capital contributions from lateral hires and homegrown talent, and bring the firm in line with its Australian merger partner Blake Dawson.

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Surge of law firm openings in revitalised Middle East

The resurgence of commercial activity in the Middle East is prompting international law firms to strengthen their presence in the region, with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and CMS announcing their first regional offices within a week of each other.

Cleary announced at the beginning of September that it would be opening its first Middle East office after obtaining a licence from the Abu Dhabi Executive Council in the summer. CMS group opened its office in Dubai on 23 September, adding to its offerings in Iraq and Lebanon.

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Growth in LB100 regional peer groups half that of London

The capital has extended its position as the most buoyant legal market in the UK, with midsize London law firms continuing to outpace their regional rivals, notching up an average 10% increase in organic revenue this year compared to just a 5.5% revenue rise for non-London firms.

The South, North and Scottish regions are among the worst performing markets for LB100 firms this year, with firms in those regions increasing revenue on average by just 1%, 5% and 5% respectively.

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Positive early signs at combined firm King & Wood Mallesons

King & Wood Mallesons (KWM) has enjoyed a successful first six months as a single firm, according to Handel Lee, head of the firm’s East China offices, who added that Africa could be the next destination for the firm en route to London and New York.

The firm, which went live in March, topped mergermarket’s Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) M&A league tables for volume for the first half of 2012, placing it ahead of Baker & McKenzie, Freehills and Clifford Chance in the table. The firm did 35 deals worth a total of $9.2bn.

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Katten Muchin Rosenman continues hiring spree

US firm Katten Muchin Rosenman remains on the charge in London following the hire of tax partner Sanjay Mehta from Stephenson Harwood in August. The latest hire comes at the end of a highly acquisitive year that has seen the Chicago-based firm make five lateral hires in six months.

This follows a triple hire to Katten’s real estate team in July, which included Stephen John as special counsel and Ranjeev Kumar as partner from the London office of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, alongside Joe Payne from Field Fisher Waterhouse.

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CMS group moves closer to one-firm model

The CMS group, which passed a major milestone this summer when it provided its financial results as a single entity for the first time, has told LB that it is looking to drop local firm names to strengthen its international brand.

‘We have been looking at the risks of being regarded as a single firm under this type of structure and we have decided we want to move forward towards being a single firm,’ said Duncan Weston, managing partner of UK member firm CMS Cameron McKenna. ‘We’ve already adopted a single visual identity as part of the conversion: the name CMS with law and tax underneath – a logo we decided upon two years ago.’

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Trowers unveils new strategy as Adlington bows out

Trowers & Hamlins senior partner elect Jennie Gubbins has told LB that she is looking to raise the firm’s corporate profile in the City and repair its ailing international offering after a bruising few years.

The firm’s current senior partner, Jonathan Adlington, has announced that he will be retiring next year. Gubbins, currently head of corporate at the firm, will replace him in March 2013.

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Rule changes put transfer pricing practices centre stage

The increased global focus of governments on tax avoidance means a handful of international law firms have been pushing their transfer pricing practices to the fore recently.

In July Macfarlanes announced the appointment of Martin Zetter to the new role of head of transfer pricing and senior economist in its tax and structuring group. Zetter joined the firm from Ernst & Young, where he was a director in its financial services transfer pricing group.

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Family law firms clamber to get arbitrators on board

Private client firms are scrambling to bolster their arbitration capabilities six months after family law arbitration was introduced in England and Wales. Family lawyers are reporting arbitration training programmes are fully booked going into 2013.

The Institute of Family Law Arbitrators (IFLA) launched the Family Law Arbitration Scheme in February this year as a viable alternative to the court process. The rising popularity of this method of resolving disputes means family law teams will be looking to offer this service as soon as possible.

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Two decades of consistency

When we first published the gross fees of 35 leading firms with revenues over £20m in 1992, we were approaching the peak of the information age: the exponential rise of e-mail, the web and the mobile phone. Suddenly the way we went about our daily lives changed forever and we have rarely looked back. But as technology changed everything over the past two decades, the legal profession has remained a constant.

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Twenty years on and the numbers still add up

In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected US president; the Maastricht Treaty was signed and Legal Business published the financial data of 35 firms with revenues over £20m. Over the last 20 years, as the information age has developed, total revenues of the 100 largest law firms based in the UK have swelled from £2.7bn to £17.67bn, outperforming the domestic economy.

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LB100 2012 – Future Proof

From merger mania to profit manipulation – the LB100 in 2012 draws on familiar themes from 20 years of law firm financials.

If there’s one thing the last 20 years have taught us at LB, it’s that the legal profession carries on regardless. The UK may have entered into a  double-dip recession despite quantitative easing; the US and a number of European countries may have seen their credit ratings downgraded; M&A may have dried up and the global debt markets may be in stasis, but the UK’s top 100 law firms continue to post record growth and trend-busting profits. The industry has again showed its remarkable resilience and stability.

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LB 100 Retrospective – All Grown Up

The LB100 survey is now in its 20th year – what does the data reveal about how the market has changed?

When LB first published the gross fees of the UK’s biggest firms in 1992, it was met with consternation and horror by some partners. ‘It is one thing for the Americans and accountants to get into this sort of thing, but not lawyers,’ one managing partner told us at the time. ‘I don’t think you will get any of the City firms to talk about this sort of thing.’

Another managing partner declared: ‘Anyone who gives you this information will be booted out of the partnership.’

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LB100 Allen & Overy: Turnover Soars With Globalisation

Allen & Overy’s worldwide senior partner David Morley remembers doing his first deal for Goldman Sachs as a young partner in the banking group in 1992.

This was a time when the fact that an American investment bank was in London was still big news: the arrival of the US financial institutions, which began at the end of the eighties, shook up the City.

‘I remember a UK corporate client being asked about the difference that Goldman had made in London,’ recalls Morley. ‘He said he used to ring up his merchant bank about a deal and they said they’d come round tomorrow to talk to him. When he rang Goldman, they said they’d be round in half an hour, and they ran.’

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LB100 Osborne Clarke: From South West to West Coast

Twenty years ago, Osborne Clarke (OC) had revenues of £11.4m and an average PEP of £97,000. It was a Bristol firm with a very small London office and the origins of an international alliance.

‘Lots of firms have overtaken us,’ says the current managing partner Simon Beswick, ‘but really OC was the first regional firm to come into London and the first regional firm to go into Europe, doing both of those in 1987.’

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LB100 Macfarlanes: Swimming Against The Tide

At the time of the first LB100, Macfarlanes was three years into a non-exclusive international alliance that included US firm O’Melveny & Myers, Paris-based Simeon & Associés (now part of Lovells), and Germany’s Noerr Stiefenhofer Lutz.

There were offices in Tokyo and Brussels, and indeed Julian Howard, now managing partner of the firm, was the partner in charge of the Tokyo outpost from 1992 to 1997.

Today, the business is a wholly different animal, having entirely bucked the trend and abandoned its alliance and international growth pretensions. In 20 years the firm’s turnover has nevertheless steadily crept in the right direction, from £28m then to £102.2m today, with the only blip being a plunge of more than 15% between 2008 and 2010.

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