| Turnover: | £176.4m |
| Profit per equity partner: | £1.01m |
| Revenue per Lawyer | £475,000 |
| Total number of lawyers: |
362 |
New York firm Schulte Roth & Zabel has had another decent year, although the firm missed out on double-digit growth in turnover on its 2004 financial year.
Despite the firm’s incessant growth in headcount over the past six years – it has 48 per cent more lawyers now than it did in 2000 – the partnership is held tightly. Schulte only increased its partnership by three last year, and two of those were associates. In 2006 Schulte made a rare lateral hire when it took Jones Day’s New York head of tax, Dan Kusnetz.
This tight grip on the equity partly explains why Schulte’s average profit per equity partner is just shy of $2m (£1.01m), making it the 12th most profitable firm in the US.
After a few years of grumblings from younger lawyers that they did not see salaries in line with one of the country’s most profitable firms, its first-year associates now get the standard New York rate of (£77,500) ($145,000).
Although pro bono work does not contribute to the bottom line, it certainly helps a firm’s profile, and Schulte has been pushing pro bono since last September’s Hurricane Katrina, after which the firm installed its first counsel of pro bono, a pet topic of name partner William Zabel (whose private-client list includes George Soros).
The firm also landed instruction on the boldface class action against the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, in which it successfully represented the victims of the hurricane.
More than anything else, the firm is known for its work with hedge funds under legendary name partner Paul Roth, and for fund formation in private equity, although it has not had the same success in translating these to M&A mandates. The New York and London offices work together to represent 800 clients with more than 2,000 funds, including Blackstone and Cerberus, which it represented this spring on its $14bn (£7.69bn) acquisition of a majority stake in GE’s finance unit GMAC as well as on its failed $9.6bn (£5.27bn) acquisition of supermarket chain Albertson’s at the beginning of 2006. In 2004, Cerberus accounted for 15 per cent, or $43.8m (£24m), of the firm’s revenue.
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