Simmons & Simmons has reported strong revenue and profit growth in the year ending 30 April 2024, after profits stalled in FY23 amid high inflation and rising costs. 

The firm’s revenue rose 10% to £574m while profits, which inched up 2% the year before, grew 8% to £204m. Meantime profit per equity partner rose 7% to £1,076k, having flatlined in FY23 at £1m. 

The results see the firm continue the trend of revenue and profit increases reported by its rivals so far this year despite tough operating conditions, including Ashurst, Osborne Clarke and HFW. 

Simmons’ managing partner, Jeremy Hoyland, hailed the results as marking “another year of growth from the firm in the face of a challenging market”.

He added that the results were driven by a combination of internal investment, focus on premium work and the firm’s strategy to concentrate on four sectors: healthcare and life sciences, financial institutions, TMT and asset management and investment funds. 

Over the course of the year, the firm made 24 lateral partner hires across 10 countries and in April promoted 11 more lawyers to partner, taking its total to more than 330 globally. Standout hires included David Blumenthal, who joined in Hong Kong from Latham & Watkins to head the firm’s Asia energy and infrastructure practice, and banking partner Kate Curneen in Dublin from DLA Piper. The firm also hired former DLA Piper disputes lawyer Amer Al Amr in Saudi Arabia ahead of a planned office launch in Riyadh – its third base in the region after Doha and Dubai. 

Simmons highlighted the 22% growth of its TMT sector work, which it said was supported by advising leading institutions on tech and data regulation, and advising some of the world’s largest tech companies.

The firm said it had also advised more than 85% of the largest 50 global asset managers, most leading hedge funds in Europe and the US and some of the world’s largest institutional investors on investments, including APG and Schroders Capital. 

Simmons’ NewLaw business, Solutions, continued to perform strongly – particularly its flexible resourcing platform Adaptive, which grew income by 14% in the past year and has grown by more than 120% over the past five years. 

The firm said its results were also driven by its growing expertise in AI, which was recognised with the appointment of its global AI lead, Minesh Tanna, as chair of the AI committee for the City of London Law Society. FY24 also saw the launch of Simmons’ GPT 4-powered generative AI tool, Percy, intended to help staff with generating comprehensive responses, summarising texts and document drafting. 

Standout work for the firm over the course of the year included acting for Danish pharmaceutical company Genmab on its $1.8bn acquisition of cancer drugmaker Profound Bio and advising dealers Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit on the third record-breaking issuance of the €18bn Italian government bond, Btp Valore. 

In April Simmons also confirmed its reappointment to BT’s legal panel, joining 10 other firms including Clifford Chance, legacy Allen & Overy and Addleshaw Goddard that would have the chance to bid for all external legal work across the group for the following three years.