Lawyer Referral In Spain

Focus: SJ Berwin - Steady as she goes

It is as though Rob Day is looking to write his own headline. As he stares out of the window of SJ Berwin’s 10 Queen Street Place offices, admiring the boats as they sail under Southwark Bridge, his PR asks rhetorically whether his boss might be giving away a longstanding interest in ­matters maritime (Day is a lifelong sailing fanatic). “I think you’ve found a metaphor,” he chips in.

So let’s play along with the imagery. Day has steered the frail SJ Berwin ship since being elected ­managing partner last October, and is at the helm of a firm that has encountered no shortage of ­turbulence along its course.

Until the latest financial year ­annual figures were not quite dreadful, but certainly less than desirable. Turnover dropped by 7 per cent, from £184m in 2009-10 to £171m, a figure that was itself down 14 per cent on the previous year’s. Average profit per equity ­partner (PEP) underwent a more drastic slide, falling from just over £800,000 in 2007-08 to £410,000 in 2008-09. It nudged up to £447,000 the following year.

The poor profit figures are touted as the reason drawn-out talks with US firm Proskauer Rose fell through in November last year. In the time that SJ Berwin’s PEP fluctuated, Proskauer’s lingered around or just below the $1.5m (£930,000) mark.

Cannon fodder?

But last month SJ Berwin announced remarkably improved results, with PEP up 40 per cent to £626,000 and turnover rising by 5 per cent. On the surface famine had turned into feast, with SJ Berwin suddenly looking like the firm everyone should want to be a partner of.

The truth is different, evidenced not least by the fact that rival firms are said to be keeping a close eye on the firm, waiting to pounce on ­anyone keen to get out. Day himself admits that private equity funds - traditionally one of the firm’s strongest suits - have seen a subdued period that took longer to recover from than the downturn in ­corporate dealflow.

But quite in what way the figures cloud reality is another matter. On the one hand SJ Berwin has been in such dire straits in previous years that any ’normal’ set of results would look like a massive upturn.

But perhaps the bounce hides a different trend: the unsustainable financial success of the boom years made the downturn that followed look atrocious. “I think if you go back further, the success was misleading. The firm wasn’t doing badly two years ago, but was doing surprisingly well two years before that,” says one source close to the firm.

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