News

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13 Jun 2011

Financial Performance for the Year ended December 2010 Strategic Framework 2011-2014

DLA Piper, one of the world's largest law firms, is providing details of its financial performance for the year ended December 2010 and also outlining its strategic direction and priorities for 2011-2014

Press Release

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In 2010, DLA Piper delivered strong financial results and made significant progress in its ambition to be the Leading Global Business Law Firm. This momentum has continued into 2011 and the Firm is confident of building on this success in the current year.

DLA Piper saw improved performances across all practice areas and with particular regional highlights being Continental Europe and the emerging economies in Asia. The UK and US grew revenue and exceeded budget expectations during this period.

Financial Highlights - 2010

Total revenue: $1.96bn/£1.27bn (1% increase on 2009)
Costs decreased by 2.5% (as compared to 2009)
Profits increased to: $777.8m/£503m (5.9% increase as compared to 2009)

Business Highlights – 2010

During the year, the Firm represented growing number of international businesses, including: Banco Santander, Barclays, Cheung Kong Infrastructure, Groupon, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited, Macquarie, MBIA, Motorola, Pfizer and QUALCOMM.
In 2010 DLA Piper achieved a series of number one rankings including: Number one among the world’s top 20 Law firms (Law 360); Number one for Global Announced Deals (mergermarket); and number one for Private Equity transactions (Dow Jones).

2011 – Continuing Momentum

The Firm's revenue in Q1 2011 was $32m/£21m higher than Q1 2010 (11.5%).
As a result of underlying organic growth and the integration of DLA Phillips Fox on 1 May 2011, the firm expects revenues to rise by 15.6% in 2011 (8.5% excluding Phillips Fox).

DLA Piper’s ambition is to be the Leading Global Business Law Firm and to achieve this its strategy will focus on:

• developing the business internationally in jurisdictions where clients are growing their businesses;
• providing good value to our clients based on our ability to provide consistent, seamless and cost effective solutions across a range of sectors, practice groups and geographies;
• ensuring that the Firm has the expertise and capability to respond to our clients’ full legal business requirements, wherever they do business.

Corporate Developments – Geographic expansion

Over the past eighteen months, the firm has expanded its geographic spread significantly. In 2010, it established a presence in Turkey, Brazil, Portugal and Venezuela and in May of this year integrated with DLA Phillips Fox in Australia.

DLA Piper now has 4,200 lawyers in 76 offices across Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and the United States.

Sir Nigel Knowles, joint CEO of DLA Piper said:

“Against the backdrop of a tough global legal services market our performance demonstrates the advantages of the firm’s diversity of services and geography. Our ambition is to be and remain the leading global business law firm and our absolute focus on our clients and what they need from us now and in the future will enable us to achieve this. Everyone in the firm is focused on continuing to deliver capability and value to our clients wherever they choose to do business."