Nearly two years ago this column recorded the derision aimed at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer following the self-touted revamp of its corporate team. At the time the department appointed four new sector heads to install some urgency among M&A partners, with the firm aiming to increase turnover by 20% over two years after a period in which it was conceded that the team had failed to grow. It was a move rivals dismissed as a power trip for the sector heads and predicted would create needless, artificial barriers.
Given the all-pervading vagueness emanating from Fleet Street following Freshfields’ McKinsey-driven banking review and the firm’s general reputation for treating practice management as an afterthought, such sentiments were perhaps understandable. But with the firm going on to put in a market-leading M&A performance, it is now a good deal harder to make the broader criticism against the firm stick. While Freshfields is unwilling to give specific figures, partners say it has “far exceeded” the 20% budgeted growth for corporate it set itself at the time. Few would dispute that, as a string of top-tier European mandates have helped the firm top Legal Week’s primary adviser rankings for 2005 and 2006, advising last year on 46 of Europe’s top 200 deals with a combined value of more than £200bn.
