Titmuss Sainer enjoys third record growth

Titmuss Sainer Dechert is celebrating its third consecutive year of record fee income growth, which it attributes to its transatlantic alliance.

This year fee income increased by 13 per cent, and the two previous years saw a growth of 14 per cent.

Until 1996 the firm's gross fees had not increased by more than 10 percent.

This year the average fee-earner brought u202,000 into the firm, and the firm's total turnover was u29.3m.

Titmuss Sainer Dechert has increasingly converged with US partner Dechert Price & Rhoads since they struck up an alliance in 1994. They extended the arrangement for another three years in 1998.

A spokesman for the firm says: "Our relationship is really bearing fruit. We are building more and more of a synergy with Dechert Price & Rhoads."

He says the majority of the cross-border work comes from an investment management group set up two years ago.

"It is now our most successful department," he says.

There are four partners and 14 fee earners in the London office who do this work, and there are 94 fee earners in the group across the world.

The spokesman says: "Dechert Price & Rhoads is consistently ranked number one in investment management in the US.

"We had never done it before, but we have learned a lot about it. There is a lot of transatlantic work involved in this area, and we get to cover the UK side."

So far this is the only cross-border group that Titmuss Sainer Dechert has set up with Dechert Price & Rhoads from scratch, rather than a system of referring of work between two departments.

The spokesman says: "We are setting up more joint practices and we are using the cross-border investment management group as a blueprint.

"We have never had a securities department before, but we are setting one up in conjunction with Dechert Price & Rhoads, and our existing corporate finance practices are going to link up."

He adds: "More areas are expected to follow."