After a subdued 2015/16 financial year, Pinsent Masons has broken the £400m barrier with revenues up 11% from £382.3m to £423.1m in 2016/2017.
Profit per equity partner (PEP) jumped 14% from £552,000 to £625,000. Excluding the impact of currency fluctuations, the firm achieved like-for-like turnover growth of 7%.
According to the firm, 85% of Pinsents revenues came from its five global sectors: advanced manufacturing and technology, financial services, real estate and energy and infrastructure.
Advanced manufacturing and technology was the main contributor to revenue at 21%, while financial services was the second largest contributor at 20%.
The remaining 15% of revenue came from areas such as contentious tax litigation, where the clients do not fit into a particular sector.
Pinsents Masons managing partner John Cleland told Legal Business that the firm had invested a lot over the last 12 months, including opening its first office in in Johannesburg, expanding Pinsents legal resourcing hub Vario into Australia, and acquiring diversity and inclusion consulting company Brook Graham.
It had also managed to grow profitability. Pinsents also increased the number of equity partners from 164 to 172 globally.
As well as investment, Cleland said the firm had been ‘pretty innovative’, and still produced a double digit increase in profitability.
‘The PEP number has gone up but we have even more equity partners. The fundamentals of what we have been doing have delivered a sufficiently good performance that we can also invest. It still means there is a double digit increase in the PEP. That is the main thing.’
Cleland highlighted Germany, Australia and Asia as regions that were doing particularly well.
‘We have been involved in some of the largest and most complex projects in Australia – such as the $15bn Melbourne Metro project and acting for Samsung C&T on the $2bn Roy Hill Iron Ore Mining dispute – one of the largest disputes in Australia.’
In terms of client appointments, over the last twelve months the firm has been appointed or reappointed to a number of panels, including AIG, Diageo and Dixons Carphone.
Pinsents also renewed its sole adviser mandate with energy giant E.ON.
In March, the firm announced that it had acquired a minority stake in New Law outsourcing business Yuzu, which was founded in January by former Colt group general counsel Robin Saphra.
kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk
