Germany’s top firms are coming under increasing pressure to publicly disclose their financial performance following a court ruling earlier this year that has swept aside blanket restrictions on law firm advertising.

The decision, handed down in June by Nuremberg’s higher regional court, the Oberlandes Gericht (OLG), overturned the ruling of a lower court on December 2003 that had branded the publication of turnover figures by German independent Roedl & Partner misleading and unethical.