FRESHFIELDS’ financial performance put on a spurt after a couple of years of stagnation, recording double-digit growth in both turnover and profit last year. Turnover jumped by 13.1 per cent to £882m, putting it fourth on the global turnover table, while PEP shot up by 19 per cent, from £700,000 to £830,000, to stand one ahead of Clifford Chance in 23rd spot.

Internationally Freshfields struggled to make serious money in Asia despite a healthy corporate practice in Hong Kong. It closed in Thailand in 2003 and in Singapore in 2006. Its all-equity partnership has become a stumbling block to growth in certain jurisdictions, something partly behind the firm’s review of its policy on the equity-salaried partner debate.

Freshfields’ London office accounts for 36.8 per cent (£325m) of firmwide revenue, while Germany contributed 25.2 per cent (£223m). Corporate was unstoppable during the past financial year, with billings in the group shooting up from £258m to £302m.

Meanwhile, revenue for the London corporate team, which had remained static at around £100m for the past four years, jumped to £118m. Controversially, in US terms, Freshfields’ equity capital markets team benefited from the boom in gaming IPOs, scooping mandates to advise PartyGaming and 888.com on their stockmarket debuts last year.

Freshfields’ global finance, litigation and real estate practices turned over £164m, £131m and £51m respectively. Litigation was up by £1m in monetary terms, but actually dropped slightly as a percentage of global turnover to 15 per cent from last year’s 16.6 per cent. The fall came despite the firm’s stupendous success in the long-running BCCI case for the Bank of England.