IT WAS time for a return to form for the global giant that is Baker & McKenzie after suffering a revenue and profit slide in 2004.

Bakers remains the world’s largest firm by number of lawyers and offices, with some 2,975 lawyers in 38 offices. It is also the most international, with more than 80 per cent of its fee-earners based outside its home country, the US.

The Europe and Middle East regions remains Bakers’ largest contributors, generating a combined turnover of 43 per cent. This compares with the 33 per cent generated in the Americas and the 24 per cent from Asia.

After small drops in both turnover and profit the year before, Bakers saw its revenue and PEP rebound in 2005. Bakers’ revenue of $1.35bn (£742.9m) represents a 10 per cent rise for this year. More impressively, the firm turned around the dip in its profit to post a 17 per cent increase in PEP to $760,000 (£418,000), although as Bakers treats each office as a separate profit centre, PEP can vary significantly between offices.

The firm is the largest international firm in Asia, with more offices across the region than any other. Bakers signalled its intention to continue growing its Asian presence when it made up 35 partners across the Asia-Pacific region in 2005. It gave the firm some 299 partners in the Asia-Pacific, of whom 147 had a stake in the equity.

Bakers has 14 offices in the Asia-Pacific region, and its expansionist and geographical coverage policy has worked well across the globe, although its PEP lags well behind those of firms of comparable turnover size.

The firm’s Sydney office is renowned for its renewable energy work and it is the location for the firm’s Asia-Pacific chairman David Jacobs, who is ably assisted in implementing the firm’s China strategy by Hong Kong managing partner David Flemming.