In March 2019, DWF achieved what no other legal business had done before, becoming the first to list on the London Stock Exchange main market. The transaction raised £75m and has supported the next phase of our evolution, enabling us to deliver on many of the promises made at IPO.
Watch our video to see how we have delivered on our promises
We committed to make more of our people shareholders
DWF's purpose is to transform legal services through our people for our clients. To help us deliver on that purpose, one of the primary objectives of our IPO was to make more of our people shareholders in the company, supporting our focus on culture and creating a unique alignment between our people, our investors and our clients. More than 2,000 of our people are now shareholders in DWF Group plc helping us drive greater connection to the business and ensuring our future is in safe hands.
In our prospectus we said that Poland was a market of interest
Last May we completed the acquisition of the Warsaw office of K&L Gates Jamka. A team of 85 joined us and we have already grown in Warsaw to more than 100 people. Our team in Poland, led by Michal Pawlowski, has enabled DWF to strengthen our global sectors of insurance, financial services and real estate and is already providing cross-border opportunities with the UK, Germany and across the CEE, CIS and Baltic regions.
We also identified Spain as a key market where we need to establish a presence
In December we acquired Rousaud Costas Duran (RCD), our largest acquisition to date, which gave us offices in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. RCD is a full-service law firm specialising in corporate law, tax, insurance, financial services, real estate and energy. It also shares our commitment to doing things differently and is reknowned for its innovative approach. The acquisition complements our existing international business and boosts our ability to support clients in Spain, and provides access to the Iberian Peninsula as well as Latin America.
We committed to building a global Managed Services platform
Throughout the IPO process, we reiterated our strategic focus on building our global Managed Services capability. Just last month, this part of our strategy took a leap forward through the acquisition of Mindcrest. Headquartered in Chicago and with offices in Pune, New York and London, Mindcrest significantly extends the reach and scope of our Managed Services capabilities. Managed Services is a real differentiator for DWF and Mindcrest provides the resource to better support our clients globally by meeting their requirements where and when they need them.
We said that we would invest in Partner talent
As well as investing in our Managed and Connected Services capabilities, we also committed to investing in senior leaders providing complex advisory services to our clients. We said that in each financial year, we would increase the number of partners in our business by between 15 and 25 partners, in net terms. In this financial year, we got off to a great start in delivering on that objective. By the half-year on 31 October we had a net increase of 20 partners. This includes partner recruitment in Australia, continental Europe, the Middle East and the UK.
We committed to further build our relationships with clients.
Ultimately, this is what it is all about. A focus on our internal culture, growing internationally, building our Managed Services platform, investing in partner talent: combined we believe this will help us to win new and retain existing clients. Since our IPO last March we have appointed or reappointed to 20 legal panels, including our recent appointment to FTSE 100 water company, Severn Trent. We were also delighted to be appointed as strategic legal partner to BT last July, delivering a five-year Managed Services contract to provide insurance and real estate legal services.
And that is not all…
These are some of the highlights from our first year as a listed business, but it doesn't tell the whole story. We also achieved the following:
