Simmons & Simmons and Bird & Bird have both posted revenue growth of 10%, as major UK firms continue to report healthy results for the last financial year.
Simmons saw revenue rise to £574m, up from last year’s £521m. Profit, meanwhile, increased by 8% to a total of £204m, while profit per equity partner (PEP) rose 7% to £1.076m after a year in which the firm added 24 lateral partners globally.
Managing partner Jeremy Hoyland told Legal Business: ‘I’m very pleased. Being able to translate our strong revenue growth into profit is really good, especially with inflation and cost increases. I’m delighted.’
Hoyland emphasised the firm’s focus on four key sectors: asset management and investment funds, financial institutions, health and life sciences, and technology, media, and telecommunications, which stood out with a 22% increase.
‘We are focused on four key sectors, which are the industries where our clients operate. We are really focused on that, and it makes a difference because we understand those industries really well. We know what the regulators are thinking, we know what’s coming down the tracks and we know what competitors are doing.’
Looking ahead, Hoyland said: ‘We’re pleased with how things are going so I don’t feel any real burning need to address. What we are doing is making progress.’
However, he added: ‘But if a brilliant firm came along and wanted to combine, of course we would talk to them.’
Meanwhile, Bird & Bird grew revenues to €632m (£545m), in line with last year’s growth rate and marking a 32nd consecutive year of growth for the firm.
Net profit increased by more than 5%, while PEP ticked up by 8% to hit €837,000.
CEO Christian Bartsch said: ‘It’s been a positive year for the firm. The sectors that Bird & Bird chooses to operate in are being transformed and we are able to guide our clients through that transformation. Our five-year strategy has given us that momentum and we are poised to take advantage of it.’
The firm released a five-year strategy in February this year that set a goal of reaching €1bn in revenue by 2029. Bartsch argued this year’s results show that Bird & Bird is on track to hit its target: ‘If you want short-term growth, absolutely you can do cost-cutting and other activities, but we have a five-year view that has been carefully modelled.’
‘We’ve seen growth across all our practice areas and sectors, which is fantastic from my perspective’, he continued. He highlighted transactional work as a particularly strong performer: ‘I would call out corporate, which is in a period of quite significant growth at the moment, in the past year we’ve had 13 new partners in the global practice, three of those internal promotions.’
The year also saw the firm open a new office in Shenzhen last October and announce its attention to launch a Tokyo office before the end of 2024.
In the US, the firm has a two-partner base in San Francisco, which opened in 2018. While Bartsch said there were no plans to increase headcount in the office, he did not rule out a merger: ‘If an opportunity ever presented itself, we would need to look at it and see if it was a right fit for our culture.’
