Turnover |
£805m |
Profit per equity partner |
£843,000 |
Equity spread |
£425,000-£1,065,000 |
Net profit |
£290.8m |
Profit margin |
36 per cent |
Revenue per lawyer |
£400,000 |
Revenue per partner |
£1,739,000 |
Revenue per equity partner |
£2,333,000 |
Total no of fee-earners |
2,500 |
Total no of assistants |
1,550 |
No of partners |
463 |
No of equity partners |
345 |
Total no of female partners |
57 |
Total no of female equity partners |
23 |
Total no of staff |
4,850 |
Leverage ratio (equity partners/fee earners) |
4.1 |
Representative clients: |
Barclays
BP
Lloyds TSB
Royal Bank of Scotland
Vodafone |
For Linklaters, 2004-05 was a year of resurrection,
when it turned around the disappointing
financial performance of the previous year to post
miraculous results.
Average PEP leapt a staggering 25 per cent to
reach a record-breaking £843,000. This increase
more than reversed the 8 per cent slump in profit
recorded during 2003-04, when PEP fell from
£734,000 to a lacklustre £674,000.
That turnaround was mirrored by turnover,
which increased 12 per cent to £805m following a
particularly strong second half of the year. Revenue
per lawyer, a key productivity measure, also rose 7
per cent to £400,000.
Much of the firm's success has been driven out
of the finance and corporate practices. Finance
reported revenue of £257.6m, while corporate edged
out key rival Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, reporting
soaring revenue of £322m after advising on 42
European announced M&A deals in 2004.
However, the most profitable department was
Christopher Style's commercial group, which
includes litigation, IP and real estate.
The corporate group also muscled in on key
Slaughter and May client Legal & General, scooping
a place on the FTSE100 company's corporate
panel for the first time late last year.
The excellent results follow a trying couple of
years for Linklaters. The firm was struggling to
increase profitability following its massive overseas
expansion through mergers in Germany, Belgium
and Sweden earlier in the new millennium.
However, managing partner Tony Angel's tough
love approach to the profitability issue ± a restructuring
of the firm's partnership, including the managed
exits and de-equitisations of a number of
partners ± has begun to show results.
Linklaters remains coy over the number of
enforced exits it has made as a result of this change
in strategy, but its reported partnership figures have
dipped to 470, compared with 490 in 2002-03. But
insiders claim that as many as 45 partners have
been moved on during the past 18 months. The
equity partnership has now shrunk to 345. The
profits figures should also be read in the light of
Linklaters' differential lockstep in jurisdictions outside
the UK ± though the US office, which has seen
much growth, is pegged to London.
Despite the obvious public relations nightmare
this has created, the restructuring also generated a
number of legal headaches, most notably when a
group of disgruntled ex-partners in Germany, culled
as part of the shake-up, threatened legal action to
dissolve the firm's entire global partnership.
Overall, the firm's other jurisdictions have
enjoyed profitable years, in particular Asia. The
firm launched Japan's first fully merged law firm
in April, taking advantage of regulatory changes
that opened the door to integrated partnerships
between Japanese and foreign lawyers.
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