European law firm Fieldfisher has announced a 6% increase in annual revenue to c.£290m for the financial year 2020/2021. Whilst this is the firm's 8th consecutive year of growth, the last financial year has been at a slower pace than in the previous four years due to the impact of the pandemic.
This year's rise was a collective effort across the board with impressive growth in particular from our Brussels, German and Paris offices which all saw a double-digit revenue growth over the last 12 months.
Fieldfisher's Managing Partner, Michael Chissick, says: "In a challenging year when Brexit and COVID-19 were front and centre of everybody's agenda, I am pleased to be announcing our positive results. Activity levels over the last year reached record highs in some months and remain strong. We are back to focusing on growth. We will continue to add and promote talent to our ranks to support our growth strategy and we have started the new financial year with confidence and optimism.
I am thankful to everybody across the Fieldfisher network for their continued hard work and commitment."
Average profit per equity partner (PEP) increased to £860k.
Offices
In addition to the outstanding year for the firm's Brussels, German and Paris offices, the Silicon Valley office posted an impressive 9% increase, narrowly missing out on joining them in the double digit league. All UK offices performed well with a collective 5% increase in turnover, underpinned by a strong performance from our ALS businesses.
The turnover for the Dublin office was up after a busier year than the previous one and the Verein offices also posted a collective increase with a busy pipeline of work.
Sectors and practices
Dispute Resolution, the firm's largest practice area, had another stellar year acting on high profile matters such as the Tatneft litigation case, a US$370 million claim, which was the longest ever virtual trial in the English High Court and the "Yukos litigation" where we successfully defended serious allegations of dishonesty and bid rigging made against the founder of globally renowned investment business Renaissance Capital and an in-house lawyer of Rencap.
The Regulatory team had a high growth year, posting a 12% increase in turnover. The team continues to grow in reputation through its role in highly complex regulatory investigations which has led to an appointment to the new UK Trade Law Panel alongside a team of stellar international trade practitioners across the globe. The team has been appointed to advise the UK Government on international trade negotiations and disputes over the next four years.
Other major contributing practice areas such as Corporate, Real Estate, Personal Injury and Medical Negligence and Technology, Outsourcing and Privacy each have teams who acted on high profile deals and public inquiries. Notably, the Corporate team acted for part of the Ferrero Rocher empire on the £246m acquisition of Fox's Biscuits branded confectionery brands and our Technology, Outsourcing and Privacy teams acted for all the biggest social media companies and e-commerce platforms, including helping global ecommerce giant eBay set up the UK operation of its widely covered global sneaker authentication programme at a warehouse in west London. In addition, they were involved in the mobile infrastructure JV between EE and Three, acting for Mobile Broadband Network Limited.
Our key strategic sector focus areas, Technology, Life Sciences, Financial Services and Energy & Natural Resources have all had a busy FY2021. Our pre-eminent Energy & Natural Resources Group achieved the biggest turnover increase of 28% after advising on a large number of domestic and cross-border deals spanning oil & gas and renewable, energy and power. A particular highlight has been the co-production of a whitepaper on sourcing minerals responsibly with technology client, Achilles. On the back of this, we were invited to participate in an Achilles customer webinar on this topic to expand on the "clean supply chains" theme at the G7 Summit conference in Cornwall held in June.
The Life Sciences group also posted an impressive increase of 17% as a result of its work across the Corporate, Commercial, IP and Dispute Resolution practices. In the technology space, we have continued to work with fitness and media company Peloton on a wide variety of matters.
Our Financial Services team has been busy advising clients on the LIBOR transition and this will continue as regulators increase the pressure for banks and financial services providers to move away from LIBOR by the end of this year. In addition, the Real Estate Finance team acted for Allianz in a landmark £400m loan to the Lazari Investments Limited group and involved the refinancing of five prime freehold central London offices.
Michael Chissick continues: "We have seen a good performance across all our offices and teams. We are capitalising on our growing reputation as a Dispute Resolution and Regulatory powerhouse and it is really pleasing to see our sector focus paying off with multi-disciplinary and cross-border teams working together to address our clients' specific industry needs. We will continue to focus on growing these teams and the supporting services provided by our alternative legal offerings."
People
We have made some significant senior appointments across the UK and Europe over the last few months and we will continue to add talent to our ranks with lateral hires, internal promotions and other recruitment as we focus on growing the firm and further strengthening our client offering. Our lawyer numbers have increased from last year and our goal is to stay on this upward trajectory.
We are looking forward to welcoming colleagues back to our offices in the UK after 19 July. The return to working from our office network will signal the start of our new hybrid working model where team members have the option to flex their week and spend three days in the office and two days working from home. This will always be subject to client demands but we hope that this will support the new routines that colleagues have created as a result of the lockdowns.
We also look forward to progressing a variety of corporate responsibility initiatives that we are very proud of. We have always taken ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) very seriously but we are starting to formalise our ESG responsibilities with more detailed reporting. The commitment and enthusiasm from our teams across the business means that we are able to support the launch of new and interesting programmes covering our pro bono activities, charity fundraising efforts, environmental impact work and diversity & inclusion.
Michael concludes: "These initiatives are important to our clients, our own people and our future recruits and we remain committed to the investment in this area."