Legacy Hammonds posts flat revenues for 2010-11

The recently merged firm, which was formed from the combination of London-headquartered Hammonds and US firm Squire Sanders & Dempsey on 1 January, posted total revenue of £118m for the last financial year, based on the footprint of legacy Hammonds.

Average PEP was up slightly from £364,000 last year to £375,000, but net profit slumped 14 per cent from £22.6m to £19.5m.

Squire Sanders European managing partner Peter Crossley admitted the post-merger results were underwhelming.

“We would’ve liked to have done better than we have,” he said. “Times are uncertain and you can go from being pretty busy to not so busy quite quickly.

“We’ve had more spikes and troughs throughout the year than we’re used to, and we made a lot of investment into the newly combined firm, but we believe that investment will pay off.”

Crossley is bullish about the firm’s merged European operations and said it now had a solid platform for future growth.

“This year we’ve seen growth from our corporate, litigation and pensions teams,” he added. “Our offices in France and Germany have performed strongly in 2011 and we see this momentum continuing across continental Europe as we’re offering our clients a more complete service in key practices such as corporate, banking and finance, real estate, restructuring and European Union competition and trade.”

While the expected benefits of the merger are yet to be realised on the UK balance sheet, the combined firm has attracted new household names to its client list over the past year including Greggs Bakery, JoJo Maman Bebe, Lee Cooper Brands, Molson Coors and Taylor Wimpey UK.

Crossley continued: “We’ve been operating as a combined firm for six months and our expanded practice expertise, industry knowledge and global reach has been well received by clients, giving us even greater confidence that the investment decisions we’ve made will stand us in good stead.”