Activity
"We have taken on over 45 people in the last year including four new partners. In the past few years we’ve had the opportunity to take stock and then invest in the right areas. I am happy with the quality and mix of people we have hired throughout the firm, from partners, to lawyers, to senior business management staff. We now have a dedicated partner in charge of our knowledge and training team and a new operations director who is working with our management group to make sure our systems and processes equal those of the very best international firms.
"Our traditional areas of strength – property, banking, corporate transactional and energy – continue to grow, but in the last 12 to 18 months we have also won a number of large advisory projects as a direct result of the hard work put in by our lawyers and IT staff to develop bespoke systems for large clients."
Focus areas
"Right now there is a particularly high level of activity in banking and property. Historically we have been strong in both areas, and it has made sense to channel resources into them in order to encourage large clients to work with us over some of the more obvious choices in the marketplace.
Outlook
"The fact that many loans and property portfolios have been acquired with medium- and longer-term strategies in mind is often lost in public discourse. If there is continued economic growth, property assets will need to be developed out, and businesses will continue to expand or combine and rationalise.
"Based on what we are seeing coming down the tracks, I believe there will be strong transactional activity this year. There has been a spike in property and loan disposals and acquisitions and this will continue in the short term. However, in the past 12 to 18 months our work on ‘business as usual’ commercial and corporate transactions has increased significantly, and we see this continuing to grow."