IT MAY have increased its turnover by 16 per cent to $808m (£444m), but this was only enough to nudge O’Melveny & Myers to nineteenth place of the world’s highest-grossing firms, one rung up on last year.

Firm chairman Arthur Culvahouse attributed the improved numbers, which included a staggering 23 per cent increase in PEP to $1.6m (£887,000), to O’Melveny’s aggressive expansion strategy starting to pay dividends.

Notably, in 2005 the firm raided Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and McDermott Will & Emery to bump up its San Francisco and New York headcounts, primarily in private equity and M&A.

High-profile deals have also helped boost spirits. The firm started 2006 with the $1.6bn (£879m) sale of Stephen Spielberg’s Dreamworks SKG studio to Paramount Pictures and continued in May advising the New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) board of directors on the NYSE’s $21bn (£11bn) bid for Euronext.

O’Melveny hopes for similarly prestigious work in Asia. It has 70 professionals in the region (although 27 are in Japan and there are only eight partners in China, spread evenly across Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong).

The Tokyo office scored a major lateral in December in Kosei Watanabe, managing partner of Watanabe Kokusai, who brought all his associates with him. If the firm is to improve its capital market offerings in China, as Culvahouse hopes, its Chinese offices need a boost with equally strong hires, although in March O’Melveny managed to tempt M&A partner Michael Moser away from Allen & Overy to head the firm’s China practice out of Hong Kong.

O’Melveny’s London hires have certainly borne fruit. Corporate heavyweight Chris Ashworth joined from Ashurst and led a team that advised GIC Special Investments as part of a high-profile consortium bidding for Associated British Ports for £2bn.