Wragges revenue 5 per cent up to £118.2m

Managing partner Ian Metcalfe said the firm missed its target for the 2011-12 financial year, which was made at the end of 2010-11 when the deal pipeline was strong.

“The first part of the [2011-12] financial year was strong but then Greece hit and the Euro crisis and then corporate fell off a cliff,” he said.

Metcalfe added that he also expected the firm’s profit to be up for 2011-12, but only slightly. Stripping out the firm’s international offices in China, Germany and France, which increased revenue by around £500,000, £250,000 and £1m, respectively, the firm’s UK growth was around 3.5 per cent.

The firm had also reported a 5 per cent rise at the half-year stage of the 2011-12 financial year (21 November 2011).

“Compared with a lot of the competition the year was not as bad as it could have been,” said Metcalfe. “In intellectual property a number of trials came through for us, pensions was strong as was contentious construction, and real estate bucked the trend in investment and residual developments. The deal we did for Blackstone was one of our largest at £1.6bn and was probably one of the largest in the market. Contentious litigation also did well.”

At the end of the 2010-11 financial year Wragges posted a 16 per cent rise in turnover, up from £96.2m to £112m. Net profit rose by almost 28 per cent to £38.8m over the same period.

As of 1 May 2012 Wragges, which is an all-equity partnership, had 125 partners across seven offices: Birmingham, Guangzhou, London, Munich and affiliated offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Paris.