Macfarlanes has had a stellar year with record profits per equity partner. Other financial results released this week reveal a bumper year for Travers Smith but a drop in profit per equity partner (PEP) at Linklaters. 

Macfarlanes' revenue has increased 20% to £201.5 million and profits have risen a massive 25% to £107 million, resulting in PEP rocketing by an astounding 26% to £1.74 million. Senior partner Charles Martin told RollOnFriday said that the great year for the firm "one in which nearly all our markets were buoyant, not just in M&A, but right the way across our practice". 

 

Equity partners so loaded they can Supersize without a second thought. 


At Travers Smith, revenue jumped by an impressive 18% to £146.9 million with PEP leaping 24% to £1.2 million. Managing Partner David Patient praised the "fantastic work" by the firm, although noted that there may be some "bumps in the road ahead" as Brexit comes up. 

At Ashurst revenue grew by 4% to £564 million with PEP growth by 11% to £743,000. While at Clyde & Co revenue was up 9% to £551.3 million, but PEP rose a modest 2% to £660,000

Linklaters posted a 6% revenue rise to £1.52 billion with profits up 2% to £676.2 million. However, the firm is the poor cousin of the Magic Circle this year compared with CC, Freshfields and A&O when it comes to PEP, as it fell by 2% to £1.54 million. 
 

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Comments

Anonymous 13 July 18 10:43

Boring fact, but PEP numbers are generally complete rubbish, because the firm gets to decide what it calls an "equity" partner - particularly given a lot of firms went all equity a few years ago for some boring tax reason I never bothered to understand, but funnily enough, despite doubling their number of equity partners, PEP stayed pretty much the same for them all. Firms tend to work on profit per fee earner internally, and it is an open secret that PEP figures are then manipulated to look good. Profits, though, are real, and mean these firms have: (a) increased fee earners so that no one knows anyone any more (b) beasted the present ones so they don't know themselves any more or (c) fired all the useful people who are not actually fee earners and will soon crash in a disorganised heap because no one knows how to run things any more.

Anonymous 26 July 18 16:15

Meanwhile a lot of administration staff and support staff are still getting no pay rise or bonus for 4 years running. Sort it out law firms.