Revenue at Berwin Leighton Paisner’s US suitor – Greenberg Traurig – rose 4% to $1.32bn last year as merger talks edge closer.
Turnover was up by around $50m on the $1.27bn the Miami giant generated in 2014, with profits per equity partner (PEP) rising 4% to $1.475m.
Revenue at Greenberg Traurig Maher, the London arm of US giant Greenberg Traurig, rose 10% to £15.7m in 2015 following a string of blockbuster corporate mandates.
The London office was instructed by engineers GKN on its £499m purchase of acquisition of Netherlands-based Fokker Technologies from private equity house Arle Capital, pest control company Rentokil on its $425m acquisition of US rival Steritech and Nomad Holdings on its €2.6bn deal for Iglo Foods, Europe’s biggest frozen foods business and the company behind the Birds Eye brand.
Around 70% of the London arm’s revenue is self-generated work, largely built around corporate and equity capital markets work, with the rest coming from referrals across the Greenberg network.
London head Paul Maher (pictured), who launched the office in 2009 after arriving from Mayer Brown, told Legal Business: ‘Core to our development has been ECM and M&A. Competition and real estate also had good years. We’re exporting so if we’re doing deals for, say, GKN, half of the work is done elsewhere. As we are run on a cash basis, any work done in Amsterdam goes to Amsterdam.’
Maher added: ‘I wanted to build a 100+ lawyer law firm in London. The team over the first six years has done very well. Organic growth is just as hard as a merger. If, and it’s a big if, we do [merge with BLP] then it’s just the next stage of the journey. We are going to get bigger whatever happens.’
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk