Top of the Peps 2010

Readers' comments (9)

• Ashley Balls | 9-Jun-2010 5:54 am

  Just how good is PEP as a measure anyway? Firms have been 'retiring' partners and changing (manipulating?) leverage models for a while now. Surely the better measure might be a rolling average of inflation adjusted fees per lawyer. Just a thought.

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• Anonymous | 9-Jun-2010 10:57 am

  Agree with the above although PEP still has its place. What I think would be instructive this year is a 3 year percentage increase/decrease figure to see how firms compare against their pre-crunch results. This would put results like the 28% increase for Eversheds in proper context. N.B. Where are Camerons' figures (announced 28 May)?

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• Anonymous | 14-Jun-2010 3:57 pm

  Think you need a minus before the Camerons figure!

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• Anonymous | 14-Jun-2010 3:58 pm

  Don't see how fees (whether per lawyer or otherwise) can give much indication of success. Income is only half the equation; fees can go up with costs going up by even more (e.g. by hiring too many people, paying them too much, not controlling overheads, etc), which all point towards a badly run and, in turn, unsuccessful firm. It is rare for revenue alone to be thought to be an indicator of the success of any business.

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• Anonymous | 15-Jun-2010 1:45 pm

  Eversheds has had rounds and rounds of redundancies - glad to see laying off all those people has benefitted the partners!

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• Anonymous | 16-Jun-2010 9:29 pm

  I know it's been said before, but the publication of PEP figures is damaging the "profession." Partners are obsessed with keeping their firm's PEP figure up and the PEP charade is turning into a race to the bottom - a competition to see who can stab the most "colleagues" in the back.

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• Anonymous | 18-Jun-2010 12:24 pm

  I agree with the negative comments on PEP. It is a wholly artificial figure. If a firm de-equitises any partner earning less than their average PEP, even if they pay him exactly the same as he earned before, their PEP will increase, without the firm being one penny more profitable. Also look out for PEP figures calculated "on the basis of numbers of equity partners at the year end" or words to that effect.
  If PEP was a share price, management would go to prison for ramping up the share price.

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• Anonymous | 8-Jul-2010 5:09 pm

  What would be really interesting would be to see how much partners actually take out of the business on a monthly basis and as dividends and then to rank that. Profit and cash out are two different things. The banks are forcing partners to inject more cash and/or to leave profits in the business.

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• Fleeced at 50% | 23-Jul-2010 12:42 pm

  Was the Slaughter and May PEP peak largely taxpayer dollas?
  
  Couldn't they just have nationalised the firm, made them into civil servants and avoided the huge billings?

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