Corporate veteran vows to maintain City focus when he succeeds Saul in May
The new senior partner at Slaughter and May, Stephen Cooke, has pledged to retain the firm’s City focus when he takes up his five-year term at the helm of the UK’s most profitable law firm in May.
Having won a contested election last month, Cooke has already signalled an intent to be more client-active than his predecessor Chris Saul, as well as practice partner David Wittmann and executive partner Richard Clark, by promising: ‘I’m going to carry on doing client work and running client relationships.’
The heavyweight corporate partner joined Slaughters as a trainee solicitor 33 years ago and has been head of M&A since 2001. He holds key client relationships with power supplier Aggreko, computer processor maker ARM Holdings, house builder Barratt Developments and Rolls-Royce.
Cooke, who brought in several new clients last year, including FTSE 100 drug manufacturer Hikma Pharmaceuticals, has promised to preserve the close-knit partnership culture at Slaughters.
‘Our culture is one of our great strengths. Being a real partnership, and maintaining the engagement and enthusiasm of partners, is critical to who and what we are. I wouldn’t want to mess with that.’
With 90% of its partners based in London, Cooke has said the City will remain the focus of its growth. ‘There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think: “Why can’t we get more clients?” We will always try to do better. There’s no glass ceiling where we can’t do any better.’
He added: ‘Clients like our method. Conveyor belt is not a phrase you will ever hear uttered at Slaughter and May. It’s not just that we’re more generalist – it’s about having a broad church of individuals because it makes us a more interesting place to work and you get viewpoints you wouldn’t otherwise hear. The service we provide, where we’re aiming to do stuff no one has done before and provide solutions no one else can provide, means having a diverse group of people is essential.’
Asia, on the other hand, remains a challenging market. ‘We have an excellent operation in Hong Kong, but growth there will be dependent on getting work that is remunerative to the levels we need.’
He concluded: ‘There are not going to be any big strategic changes. If it’s not broke, I’m not going to fix it. We will need to grasp the opportunities and use our contacts. Maximising your opportunities from relationships is a much more productive way of building our practice than some macro view of global strategy and business trends. As John Kenneth Galbraith said: “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”‘
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk