King& Spalding's revenue surges

King& Spalding's revenue surges

The Atlanta-based firm's profit per equity partner (PEP) hit $4.37m on the back of big deals at year end

King & Spalding's revenue saw a 20percent rise to $1.83bn and a 25percent rise in profit per equity partner (PEP) for the FY2021, becoming the latest US firm issuing robust financial results on the back of resilient deals market.

With a stark increase in PEP from $3.5m in FY2020 to $4.37m in FY2021, the Atlanta-based firm's net income rose by 25percent from $713m in 2020 to $896m in 2021.

King & Spalding's London office, like the other US firms, saw strong results with 14% increase in revenue to hit $62m. In the last week, Reed Smith and Cooley reported city revenue of $243m and $105m respectively, in light of the increased deal activity round the year on both sides of the Atlantic.

Refinitiv reported that the firm's deal making soared to new heights, with global M&A activity being bullish the whole year with a record of $4.2trn set in 2015 to reach $5.9trn given that the market reinstated traction after the economic slowdown induced by the Covid-19 pandemic.

King & Spalding provided advisory service to a clutch of deals in FY2021 which were worth more than $1bn, including Intuit acquiring Mailchimp for $12bn, the tech platform behind financial software solutions TurboTax, QuickBooks and Credit Karma, in September. A team from King & Splading in August led Equifax, data Analytics Company through its $1.825bn acquisition of Appriss, a law enforcement and government agency-focused data analytics tech company.

The firm has also hired a fair number of partners across its international outposts from its rivals, like Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom's M&A 'rising star' Parveet Singh Gandoak in Singapore in November. It also added Vincent Rowan and Shareena Edmonds, distinguished construction partners in London in January from Reed Smith.

In October, King & Splading saw six partners joining its recently-launched global human capital and compliance practice in New York and Chicago from Seyfath Shaw, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Barnes & Thornburg.

Salomé Cisnal de Ugarte, an antitrust partner from Hogan Lovells was hired by Kings & Splading in August, to launch a competition practice in Brussels, in a year bookended by an office opening in North Virginia in the second half of 2020 and another in Miami this January.

Its US rival White & Case, marked a similarly robust 2021 financial results last month with revenue rising by 20percent to $2.87bn and 17percent rise in PEP to $3.514m. Based in New York, the firm also saw double digit revenue growth across its presence in three regions. Asia Pacific marked the maximum rise of 30percent followed by the Americas (23percent) and the EMEA region (15percent).

A week later, Hogan Lovells posted similar revenue growth of 12.9percent to reach $2.6bn and a whopping 25percent increase in PEP to hit $2.49m.