Top 10 Spanish firm Pérez-Llorca has beefed up its management team by appointing two executive partners to support long-serving senior partner Pedro Pérez-Llorca as it continues to grow at pace. 

The firm, which expects to close the 2023 financial year having quintupled sales over the past decade, has named Julio Lujambio as its first executive partner and Iván Delgado as its first international executive partner.  

Lujambio will be expected to support the development of the 350-lawyer firm’s strategy and direction in Spain, while Delgado will be in charge of shaping its international strategy and operations. 

Both men will continue to work under the direction of Pedro Pérez-Llorca, the son of José Pedro Pérez-Llorca, who founded the firm in 1982 after a distinguished political career during which he helped draft Spain’s constitution. 

They will report to the firm’s board of directors, of which they have been members since December 2020, and will combine their new roles with their respective legal practices.  

“The appointments of Julio and Iván are part of the succession process for the firm’s governing bodies,” said Pedro Pérez-Llorca, who has led the firm as senior partner since 1997. “The growth experienced in the national and international market over the past decade obliges us to look to the future and provide the firm with a solid structure to meet the challenges we set ourselves.”  

Both Lujambio and Iván are senior partners of Pérez-Llorca, where Lujambio focuses his practice on M&A and capital markets transactions and Delgado advises industrial groups and funds on cross-border deals. The latter opened the firm’s New York office in 2015 and worked there until 2020. Since then he has coordinated all the firm’s international activities.  

The other members of the management team, who retain their existing responsibilities, are partner and chief operating officer Constanza Vergara and chief financial officer María Luisa de Landecho.

Moray McLaren, co-founder of Lexington Consultants, said: “This will come as no surprise. In taking the next step in its institutionalisation, Pérez-Llorca is simply future proofing the firm.”

The new appointments follow a period of significant growth for Pérez-Llorca in terms of turnover and its office network. Between 2018 and 2022 the firm says it upped revenue by 117% – among the highest rate of growth of any European law firm.

It expects to bring in revenue of around €124m in FY23. That would represent a 10% increase on its 2022 performance, according to Spanish newspaper Expansión’s annual law firm financial results table, in which it was placed in seventh place by revenue. 

The firm has also been busily expanding its office network, announcing last month that it had added 17 lawyers from rivals including Portugal’s RRP Advogados to open an office in Lisbon.   

Over the past two years the firm has also set up shop in Brussels and Singapore, the latter of which it claimed made it the first Spanish law firm to have a base in the Asian city state. It now has five international offices in total, including New York and London.

Last November, Spanish giant Garrigues announced labour and employment lawyer Rosa Zarza as its next senior partner, the first women to hold the position at the firm.