Olswang's PEP rises 38 per cent after 'draconian' approach to spending

At the same time the firm’s turnover rose marginally, up 2 per cent from £89.2m to £91m.

The firm’s chief executive David Stewart said the significant increase had been the result of a strong performance at the firm, particularly in the second half of the year, as well as cost savings the firm had achieved of around £4m.

“We haven’t achieved this result by deequitisations or restructuring the equity but by all our people working extremely hard,” said Stewart. “There’s been some staff reduction, but we did our redundancies at an early stage and booked the cost in the prior year. We’ve also taken a draconian line on discretionary spend.”

Stewart pointed to a number of deals handled by Olswang’s corporate group including Better Capital Fund’s acquisition of the UK business of Reader’s Digest, Net-A-Porter on its £350m sale to Richemont, and Chrysalis on its acquisition of music publishing business First State Media.

Stewart also highlighted the firm’s litigation group, which he said ended the year 25 per cent ahead of budget, along with the performance of Olswang’s IP and real estate groups, plus restructuring partner Alicia Videon’s advice to Kaupthing on the workout of its derivatives book.

He added that there had been a 50 per cent growth in international revenue, with Germany and Belgium in particular being strong.