On the surface, Simmons & Simmons had an amazing year and has banished all the prophets of doom. However, the firm still failed to meet its (admittedly ambitious) targets and its profit is much lower than it should be for a City firm of its size.

PEP was up an astounding 40 per cent from £275,000 to £385,000, but that fell just short of its £400,000 target. Most scoffed when they heard of that aim, so to get so close is a valiant effort.

Simmons axed 11 partners to kickstart the profit drive, but it lost a whole lot more who it would have liked to keep. Corporate partners Steven Bryan and Ed Lukins left for Lovells and Morrison & Foerster respectively; London IP head Helen Newman quit for Kilpatrick Stockton with her New York counterpart Christopher Woods; energy head Jerry Walter joined Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson; and Addleshaw Goddard took banking head Nicholas Fisher. And that's just a small selection.

Simmons' management has now accepted that de-equitisations are a part of management life rather than a quick fix to boost profit, and on the positive side the firm has managed to get a younger group of partners who are more focused on business development. This was particularly evident in the London corporate department, which boosted revenue by 40 per cent despite all the departures.

Overall revenues were up 9.9 per cent, from £178.3m to £196m, on the back of a string of new clients. One of those was China Telecom, which accounted for Simmons' biggest deal of the year ± the acquisition of 10 provincial telecoms networks in China for $8.2bn (£4.48bn).

The firm has set a new PEP target for 2005-06 of £450,000, which would be an all-time high. The new management team of former finance head Mark Dawkins and senior partner Janet Gaymer would like to revise this upwards during the course of the year. Now that would be progress.