Profits slipped at Freshfields last year after the firm’s salary bill soared by over £100 million, latest accounts show.
For the year ended 30 April 2025, the City giant posted a pre-tax surplus of £656.8m, down from £668.9m in 2024. Income rose 6% to £2.25bn.
Profit for the year for discretionary division among the 296 LLP members dipped from £665m to £648m.
Freshfields announced in 2023 that disclosure of its trading performance would in future be limited to mandatory accounts filed months after the year end. In 2024-25, the firm paid staff a total of £1,206m, up from £1,101m in the previous 12 months. The average number of people employed climbed from 5,601 to 5,945 (including 3,901 fee-earners).
In 2025 Freshfields’ ‘key management personnel’, comprising the senior partner, managing partners and heads of the global practice groups, shared remuneration of £25.8m, down from £26.2m.
In 2024-25 revenues rose in all of the firm’s four geographical markets. European income climbed 2% to £1,598m (£1,561m), while US revenue increased sharply to £473m (£391m). Middle East and North Africa also posted a rise, from £42m to £44m, as did Asia (£134m from £127m).
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, as it then was, announced in July 2023 that it would no longer be releasing details of its trading performance to the media. The firm said it considered ’the real sign of the firm’s progress to be based on the quality of business we’ve built and the client mandates we’re winning around the globe’.
In 2023 the firm posted pre-tax profit of £726.3m, but this figure had been restated to include a big positive adjustment reflecting an accounting change relating to partner annuities.
The firm ended 2024-25 with net cash of £87m, up from £36m 12 months earlier.
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