North Sea deals have helped multinational law firm Pinsent Masons to break through the £500 million turnover barrier for the first time.
Pinsent, which employs nearly 3,000 people globally, including around 1,500 lawyers and 400 partners, said it turned over £503.3m during the year to April – up 1.5% from £495.9m in the previous 12 months.
Profits per partner across office locations including Aberdeen surged by 16% to £636,000.
‘Standout’ activities
Managing partner John Cleland said: “We have supported our clients on some standout matters this year.
“By way of example, these include advising Tesla on Australia’s first virtual power plant to provide cheaper, cleaner power to South Australia, Resonance on the launch of a series of impact investment funds including the Women in Safe Homes fund, GNA Biosolutions on the development of a rapid Covid-19 test in Germany and the UK Government on its purchase of an additional 60 million doses of the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.”
Global expansion
Pinsent, which employs more than 500 lawyers and support staff in Scotland, has extended its global presence to 26 locations during the past year by opening a new office in the Netherlands
Meanwhile, Glasgow-based partner and corporate mergers and acquisitions specialist Rosalie Chadwick was appointed global head of the firm’s oil and gas practice.
Pinsent said Scottish-based had lawyers played a “central role” in completing a string or major transactions on behalf of domestic and international clients in the period.
It highlighted the work of its partly Aberdeen-based energy team advising on a “host of deals” in the North Sea.
These included the acquisition of Zennor Petroleum by private equity backed Neo Energy for £450m.
The firm also represented battery storage developer, infrastructure provider and financier Zenobe Energy on its £150m cash injection from savings and investment company M&G Plc.
Pandemic cuts partner pay at Johnston Carmichael
Rosalie Chadwick: Major shift to renewables leading to more activity
Other notable deals included advising Alternative Investment Market-listed Craneware, a software firm based in Edinburgh but focused on the US healthcare market, on its fundraising activities.
Senior partner Richard Foley said: “For us, success is to fulfil a purpose, and our purpose is to make business work better for people.
“If we get that right then financial success will follow, as we saw when we broke through the £500m revenue mark this year.”
Mr Foley added: “Financial improvements are a product of a successful business, not the measure of it. We assess ourselves against metrics that represent what is truly meaningful to our stakeholders and help us to focus on bettering ourselves as a purpose-led organisation.”
Pinsent has said it is moving away from turnover and profits being a yardstick for success, focusing instead on performance metrics such as client and employee engagement survey findings, progress in reducing its energy consumption and how its charity projects supported more than 13,000 young people globally in 2020-21.
