Clifford Chance

Results and strategy update 2015-2016: Fact sheet

Our vision

We will be the global law firm of choice for the world's leading businesses of today and tomorrow.

Working alongside clients on their most complex and business critical matters

Highlights include:

• Advising the key Anheuser-Busch InBev shareholders in relation to financing its bid for SAB Miller plc, the biggest brewing takeover in history. The deal strengthened AB InBev’s position in key emerging regions with strong growth prospects such as Asia, Central and South America, and Africa, creating the world's first truly global brewer.
• Advised Poste Italiane, Italy’s national postal service company and financial services provider, in relation to its IPO, the biggest in Europe during 2015.The disposal of up to 38% in Poste was Italy’s biggest state sale in a decade and allowed the Treasury to pocket up to €3.4 billion to trim its public debt.
• Advising the bondholders of, and certain investors in, the Abengoa Group, a major international energy renewables group headquartered in Seville, in relation to the multi-jurisdictional restructuring of the company´s EUR 20 billion financial indebtedness in what is Europe's largest ever restructuring.
• Advising EDF on proposals for China General Nuclear Power Corporation to invest GBP 6bn in the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project.
• Advised the joint global coordinators on Bank of China's USD 3.55 billion innovative four currency multi-tranche bond issuance. The multiple series of notes were issued under Bank of China Limited's USD 20 billion Medium Term Note Programme.
• Represented Citi on the bank's successful defence against Terra Firma's GBP 1.5bn law suit before Mr Justice Burton in the High Court in London. During its eight year life, over 50 Clifford Chance partners advised on the case, from across every practice and from every region.
• Advised GE in relation to the landmark Phase II antitrust clearance of its acquisition of the power and grid businesses of Alstom, including the submission of a remedies package to the European Commission.
• Advising Sainsbury's on its successful bid for Home Retail Group.
• Advised CVC Capital Partners on its partnership with Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, GIC, leading CVC to become a co-shareholder in the RAC through the purchase of Carlyle's stake in the RAC. The investment was the very first made from CVC's Strategic Opportunities Platform, established in response to growing demand from large investors to be able to invest for the long term in stable, high quality businesses.
• Advised Canadian property investor Brookfield Property Partners on the acquisition of the Potsdamer Platz portfolio in Berlin.  The portfolio is known as a prime site in the real estate community, and includes office spaces, a shopping centre, cinemas, a theatre, a hotel and some 30 restaurants and cafes. The transaction is known as one of the largest in Germany since 2008.

Investing in our capabilities and platform to ensure the best delivery of services to our clients

We deepened our capability in key areas through targeted lateral partner recruitment:

• In the past year we have hired seven leading experts to further strengthen the firm's capabilities in strategic areas. These include: Dan Silver in the US, a cyber crime expert; Jessica Gladstone in London, who specialises in Public International Law; high-yield specialist Alex Lloyd in Hong Kong and top ranked M&A partner Anselm Raddatz in Germany.

We continue to develop our own talent:

• We promoted 24 new partners, from 13 of the firm's offices around the globe.
• The new partners' practices cover public M&A and IPOs; Private Equity, funds and trusts; leveraged, acquisition, asset and project financing; investigations, commercial litigation; tax and employment matters; and sanctions.

We accelerated the deployment of Artificial Intelligence tools through a partnership with Kira Systems:

• Kira will enable us to deliver better value to clients by increasing speed, efficiency and accuracy, and reducing risk. The deal with Kira is the next step in the firm's innovation strategy.

We launched the Legal Support Centre (LSC) in Delhi. The LSC builds on the success of its forerunner, the Knowledge Centre, focusing on those areas where it provides maximum value to clients and to Clifford Chance teams:

• The LSC offer is concentrated on large-scale projects or frequently repeated packages of work, where embedded processes make a significant difference.
• The LSC completed 75 projects during 2015/16 and now offers 18 packages, an increase from the original nine on offer initially, and with more packages are in the pipeline.

We further developed our Continuous Improvement capability, with hundreds of lawyers and business services colleagues involved in a wide range of projects across the firm globally:

• Integrating Continuous Improvement into how we deliver on specific mandates and into our broader client relationships is our primary focus and this continues to secure a very positive response from our clients.  For example, we undertook a successful project with a major multinational from the Resources sector to help it understand how one of its divisions was using legal services and how the process could be ameliorated to save time and money. The project resulted in a number of improvements for the client, and is now being rolled out by two other business units.
• Continuous Improvement techniques are regularly applied across all areas of the firm's operations.  This brings a number of improvements in terms of client service, efficiency and accuracy, as well as savings on our operational costs. Last year more than GBP 7 million of operational savings were made as a result of new projects.

Building a strong inclusive team

We reaffirmed our commitment to our LGBT colleagues, clients and those amongst our communities:

• We successfully launched Arcus Allies, a global programme to help foster a growing culture of inclusion by creating a space where LGBT people feel more supported and able to be themselves. To date, over 270 allies have signed up, including the firm's entire Executive Leadership Group. The allies work closely with the firm's LGBT network, Arcus.
• Clifford Chance was placed 9^th in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index Top 100.  This is the highest profile benchmarking exercise for LGBT inclusive employers in the UK. Judges particularly noted the way that we engage clients, reach out to support staff and women, and use monitoring and survey feedback to present information to management.

We made progress towards achieving our ambition of women making up 30% of the firm's partnership:

• 18% of our partnership is now made up of women, up 1%.
• London and Asia Pacific made particular progress. Over the past five years, on average 29% of partner promotions in Asia Pacific have been women, and in London, 44% of appointed partners were women.

We launched a new NGO supporters network, designed to  bring together firm-wide committed teams with a passionate interest in individual strategic pro bono clients (for example, Advocates for International Development, War Child, Human Rights Watch):

• Since its launch less than 4 weeks ago, more than 400 of staff have signed up for a supporters network.

A true global player

• We were ranked number one law firm in the Chambers Global Top 30 for the third year in a row.
• Over 75% of our top 50 clients worked with us across at least 20 of our offices globally; 96% of our top 25 clients worked with us across all of our practice areas.

Note that the exchange rates used to determine the US Dollar and Euro equivalent figures are USD1.50/£1 and EUR1.36/£1, which are the average annual exchange rates for the year ended 30 April 2016.