| Turnover: | £261m |
| Profit per equity partner: | £368,000 |
| Revenue per lawyer: | £327,000 |
| Total number of lawyers: | 798 |
After a flat 2004, which saw revenue increase by just 1.3 per cent, Virginia-based Hunton & Williams rebounded with an 8 per cent hike in global turnover in 2005 to reach £261m ($475m).
The firm operates on a UK-style financial year, running from 1 May to 30 April, and it was the firm's London office that surprised many onlookers by doubling its turnover in a year.
The London office moved from a 2004-05 turnover of £2.94m ($5.35m) to £5.68m ($10.35m) in 2005 - a 93 per cent increase in the space of 12 months.
The increase was helped by a number of lateral hires in the previous year, although even more impressively the revenue per lawyer for London grew some 56 per cent over the same period to £223,000 ($406,000).
While the revenue growth was pleasing, the average profit per equity partner was somewhat disappointing, with just a 4.6 per cent growth in 2005-06. The firm posted a figure of £368,000 ($670,000), compared with the 2004-05 result of £351,000 ($640,000).
The London team moved into the iconic Gherkin building during the year and is now paying nearly £1m ($1.82m) annually in rent, but continues to run a successful AIM practice through local managing partner Martin Thomas.
Its local strategy to build up an energy practice paid off too when it turned Russian natural gas giant Gazprom into a corporate client. In Asia, the firm doubled the size of its Bangkok operation in September 2005 by snaring the Coudert Brothers operation. It also has a southern Asia outpost in Singapore.
The firm opened in Los Angeles in September 2006 through the acquisition of litigation boutique O'Donnell & Mortimer. It is hoping to follow that with a San Francisco offering in the near future, giving it a national foothold in the US.
Chairman Thurston Moore told The Lawyer (11 September) that the firm had Asia in its sights and would target the region out of the US West coast and London, signalling that a reopening of the Hong Kong operation it closed in 2004 was not on the cards. The firm already operates an office in Beijing.
Hunton took the unusual step of appointing a managing partner from outside its ranks in February when it named client Diageo's North American general counsel Wally Martinez as just its sixth managing partner in the firm's 105-year history.
Martinez had previously been a litigation partner in the firm's Miami office, but left to move in-house in 2004.
| 
