Ashurst has reported a seven per cent drop in global revenues for the 2008-09 financial year.
The silver circle firm announced total revenue of £301m, which is down from £323m at the end of the 2007-08 financial year.
While the firm is yet to announce its average profit per equity partner (PEP) figure, managing partner Simon Bromwich (pictured) said Ashurst is prepared for a decline in profits.
Bromwich said: “The revenue figure reflects what a difficult market we’ve faced in the second six months of the year.
“Profitability will obviously be down a lot. However this comes after two surging years for Ashurst and that has to be kept in mind in the year-on-year comparison.”
Bromwich confirmed that Ashurst had absorbed the cost of its recent redundancy programme in its 2008-09 accounts.
In January The Lawyer reported that the firm had cut 10 equity partners from its global ranks (21 January). Seven London equity partners and three from the firm’s overseas offices were affected.
While the firm has so far avoided widespread associate cuts, it shed 15 secretarial staff in January (27 January).
The firm has shed many more staff than the publicised redundancies – mainly with creative use of poor performance reviews and compromise agreements. Staff lost in this manner are not included in the redundancy headcount and so the firm is not portrayed in such a bad light as, say, Linklaters who shed over 250 jobs and ended up with this figure broadcast on national TV news!
When calculating job losses, we should add these losses to the redundancy figures. Or ignore the method of staff loss altogether and simply publish the amount of staff in 2007 and the amount of staff in 2008. The difference being the amount of staff shed (by whatever means).