Travers Smith has posted a robust set of financial results with revenue climbing 15.4% to hit £185.7m against a 21.5% jump in profit per equity partner (PEP) to £1.2m.

The provisional results for the London-based firm's financial year, ending 30 June, mark a return to form that reflects the sharp recovery in deal markets that occured in the second half of 2020 and on into 2021 following the Covid-19 generated slump in H1 2020. Last year, the London-based firm posted a 1% fall in revenue against a 20% fall in PEP.

Newly installed managing partner Edmund Reed said: “By supporting each other both professionally and personally, every team across the firm has contributed to produce these excellent results. I am very proud of what we have achieved through this extraordinarily difficult period.”

Reed pointed to continued investment in the business, including building across its core areas of asset management, M&A and dispute resolution and investigations as key to its performance.

“This has enabled us to attract a number of significant instructions from clients, which have kept our teams busy. The next 12 months will no doubt present new challenges, but we go into our new financial year in very good shape, confident in our model, and with a healthy pipeline of work.” 

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The firm acted on seven of the 34 UK Main Market IPOs and 22 secondary equity fundraisings in 2020, including advising Conduit Holdings on its £826m Main Market IPO, the largest start-up raise ever.

The firm said it did not access the UK Government's Job Retention Scheme and kept all members of staff on full pay throughout, adding that it topped up the salaries of contractors furloughed by their employers, redeployed teams who couldn’t do their jobs remotely and introduced temporary working options during the home-schooling period.

The firm promoted seven lawyers to the partnership last month across its dispute resolution, private equity and financial sponsors funds, finance and financial services and markets practices. Also last month, it announced the hire of infrastructure finance specialist Ben Thompson, who joins the firm as a partner from Weil Gotshal & Manges.

Going in the other direction, the firm saw its head of corporate M&A Phil Cheveley exit in March to be co-head of M&A for EMEA at Shearman & Sterling.