Page 47 - DWF Annual Report 2017

Growth through M&A “This continued investment We already have seen in the final quarter
Our strategy recognises that organic UK will give us a ‘lateral of FY 16/17 and the first quarter of FY
17/18 an indication of the potential for
growth is going to continue to be dividend’ in the years to
challenging, so we have a significant additional revenue that our investments
focus on M&A activity and we executed come and growth. They are bringing.
four important deals: are deliberate investments
that will give us a material
1. We acquired niche Law Firm Fox “Our main priority for the
Hartley early in the year to strengthen payback in the future.” year ahead is to maximise
our insurance, litigation and product this latent potential in the
liability capability and enhance our sector
expertise. It helped secure new business via the acquisitions
domestic and international insurer clients. we have made and the
Maximising potential
2. We merged with Belfast-based Over the past few years we have worked carefully selected jurisdictions
commercial Law Firm C&H Jefferson hard together to take a traditional Law Firm we have expanded into. This
on 1 December 2016, one of the model and turn it on its head, in line with will allow us to achieve our
largest legal practices in Northern our strategy of doing things differently.
Ireland. This gave us an all-Ireland purpose of transforming legal
capability which we view as critical for With our geographical expansion and the services through our people,
the Ireland market and particularly creation of Connected Services, which
timely in light of Brexit. brings together complementary products for our clients.”
and services to our core legal offering, we
3. We merged with Heenan Paris, an have laid the groundwork for a
established office in Paris with an step-change in our performance and
international outlook. With France position in the market.
being one of Germany’s largest and
most significant trading partners, the
merger complemented our growing
European footprint.

4. Our Triton deal was one that happened
very quickly. We’re an opportunistic
business and saw great potential in
Triton. There was strong operational
synergy, given their footprint matched
ours, along with an opportunity to extend
our non-legal services in areas such as
loss adjusting and claims handling.

We are still in build mode in certain
practices and locations and FY 16/17 also
saw us make a number of strategic lateral
hires, in addition to the M&A activity.
Good revenue outturn

Our strong second half and M&A activity
has given us an encouraging revenue
outturn, seeing a 7% increase in revenue
compared to the previous year. In terms
of profitability, pricing remains a challenge
in the UK market and we absorbed
significant one-off M&A-related costs to
integrate the four businesses which joined
DWF during the year. We also continued
with lateral hire activity to build upon the
M&A investments, and this has led to a
profit outturn which, whilst ahead of PY,
has given a short term dip in PEP.

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