| Turnover: | £275m |
| Profit per equity partner: | £1.43m |
| Revenue per lawyer: | £703,000 |
| Total number of lawyers: | 431 |
A standout year for Cravath Swaine & Moore saw the New York corporate and litigation powerhouse take second spot in the average profit per equity partner (PEP) table with a 17.5 per cent rise from £1.21m ($2.21m) to £1.43m ($2.6m).
The ranking shift displaced Sullivan & Cromwell, which dropped to fifth, and closed the gap on the Global 100's most profitable firm, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.
Cravath also hit a milestone in terms of revenue, surpassing the $500m (£274.7m) mark. It's actual £275m ($500.5m) turnover was not enough to stop it from slipping down the rankings, however, with the firm dropping from 46th to 49th place.
It was also an eventful year for Cravath. Presiding partner Bob Joffe announced he was to step down on 1 January 2007 to return to full-time fee-earning, with head of litigation Evan Chesler set to take over. Later in 2006, Chesler's number two, former head of corporate Allen Parker, was appointed as deputy presiding partner.
Joffe told The Lawyer (6 February 2006) that 2005 had been Cravath's "best ever" year, with net income and income per partner both up by around 20 per cent.
Deal highlights for Cravath during 2005 included advising GTech on its $4.8bn (£2.63bn) acquisition of Italy's lottery operator Lottomatica, DreamWorks SKG on its sale to Paramount, and Chevron on its takeover battle with China National Offshore Oil Corporation for Unocal. As might be expected, the highlights continued into 2006. German power company E.On chose Cravath ahead of regular advisers Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Shearman & Sterling for its €29.1bn (£19.9bn) bid for Spanish power producers Endesa.
The firm advised long-time client Johnson & Johnson on its $16.6bn (£9.1bn) acquisition of Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, and towards the end of the year bagged a role advising financial adviser Lazard in the $8bn (£4.4bn) tie-up between the US futures and derivatives exchanges Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.
Internationally there was a rare exit, when Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton hired Asia partner Clayton Johnson to strengthen its Asian practice.
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