MUNDAYS SOLICITORS

Surrey-based Mundays Solicitors has just entered into a best friends network with a number of foreign firms (The Lawyer, 25 November). The aim of the network is for each of the best-friend firms to recommend each other's services to new and existing clients. Senior partner Peter Munday says that as a result of joining the network the firm is already working on three deals, including a high-profile litigation case. Approximately 5 per cent of Mundays' fee income is generated from overseas work - a figure Munday is hoping will rise in the future.

The firm has 16 partners and 12 assistants, with four new assistants joining in January 2003. Its turnover at the end of July 2002 was £6.7m, a rise of more than half a million on 2001. Munday claims that despite the economic downturn, the performance across all practice areas has improved.

When the firm was launched in 1960 by the late Fred Munday it focused on private client work. Today, 80 per cent of the firm's turnover is generated from corporate and commercial work. Munday says the firm has notable commercial property, M&A, corporate finance, retail pharmacy, intellectual property and competition law practices.

Munday adds that the firm intends to expand its IT department, which is led by partner Valerie Toon, and will also soon be providing a lender-focused banking service. He says: "Going by previous performance, the firm doubles in size every 10 years through organic growth. Therefore, I envisage the firm to grow by half that during the next five years."

On the commercial property side, Mundays recently advised Octagon Developments on its purchase of the Brunel University site at Twickenham and the joint venture with Bank of Scotland to develop the site. Octagon, which specialises in the development of luxury residential property around the M25, will develop the Twickenham site primarily for residential accommodation. Brunel University was advised by Nabarro Nathanson, while DLA acted for Bank of Scotland. The deal represented a further strengthening of Munday's relationship with Octagon. The firm already handles all of its corporate and commercial work.

One of Mundays' major pharmaceutical clients is Alliance Unichem. The firm's relationship with Alliance, which also uses Slaughter and May, goes back to 1990, when it handled franchising work for the company.

Last summer, Munday, with the support of Simon Withers and Ingrid Saffin, advised Alliance and its retail pharmacy subsidiary on the purchase of four high street chemists. But as the sector waits for the Office of Fair Trading to publish its report on pharmacy contracts and practices there is less work around.

Munday says the firm is "proactive, commercial and energetic". In the past the firm has won clients including Fullers Logistics, London Cargo Group and Waymade Healthcare, as a result of being on the other side of deals.