The partnerships of Ashurst LLP and Ashurst Australia have voted in favour of full financial integration of the two firms. This decision takes effect on 1 November and will create a firm of approximately 1,800 lawyers and revenues of approximately A$930 million. The full integration follows the move by Blake Dawson to adopt the Ashurst branding last year in anticipation of financial integration.
Key features of the integration include a single profit pool allocated on a managed lock-step system and a unified management structure. Ashurst Australia partners will join the LLP lockstep which Ashurst Australia chairman Mary Padbury described as similar to that currently in use by the Australian partnership. “The differences in the systems were not all that different; they had a couple more levels than we did so we needed to make that work and we’ve done that,” she told ALB. A “balanced scorecard” system will measure partner performance against a range of financial and non-financial criteria, but there will be no specific weightings allocated to each criterion.
The firm will report its financial results on the UK (April) financial year as a global entity and there are no plans for separate reporting of Australian results. “That’s probably a question for John Carrington as managing partner Australia, but in a way I think we really see ourselves now as part of a global business and so reporting in that way is not consistent with where we’re headed,” said Padbury.
The firms will continue using their legacy practice management systems for the moment.
“We do at the moment have different practice management systems and in the short term we’ll be looking at having a single method of reporting - we won’t be immediately investing in a new practice management system,” said Padbury. “We acquired a new practice management system relatively recently so in due course we’ll obviously be on the same system but we’re fairly happy with the workarounds and the way we’re getting the two systems to talk to each other at the moment.”