Macfarlanes

Founded in 1875 with a focus on private clients, Macfarlanes has maintained this market lead through to 2024. The firm also boasts a robust corporate practice specialising in private equity and a litigation practice that has doubled in size over the past decade as part of the firm’s post-financial crisis strategy. This unique practice mix has earned Macfarlanes 14 Band 2 or higher rankings in the Legal 500 2025 and helped it navigate the recent slowdown in the UK legal market. In 2023/2024, the firm achieved revenue growth of 13%, reaching £309.1 million. Even factoring in a weaker prior year, this growth is notable, driven by standout performance in transactions involving financial services clients. Looking ahead, the firm seems to continue to invest equally in all of its three strongholds - corporate, private client, and litigation. In 2024, it added three partners in each of private client and corporate M&A and four in litigation, mainly through internal promotions. Litigation remains the firm’s largest practice by partner headcount, with 21 partners. Macfarlanes is conservative when it comes to international expansion, maintaining only one overseas office in Brussels. The firm relies instead on a best-friend network, partnering with different local counsel depending on clients’ needs and budget rather than running expensive on-the-ground local offices. The lean international model helps lower Macfarlanes’ costs base and contributes to its impressive PEP, which reached £2.6m in 2023 - consistently higher than the Magic Circle average of less than £2.1m. Keeping true to its roots, Macfarlanes still maintains a renowned high-end private client practice, consistently ranked Band 1 by the Legal 500 for both contentious and non-contentious trusts and probate. The practice is very often a gateway for the firm to build personal relationships with high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and trustees who, after all, would themselves have assets, investments, and business interests across multiple jurisdictions to be structured, deployed, or protected through litigation and enforcement. For example, in 2024, Macfarlanes represented Peter Hargreaves, co-founder and largest shareholder of FTSE 100 company Hargreaves Lansdown plc, in the £5.4 billion recommended takeover of Hargreaves Lansdown by CVC, Nordic Capital and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. This is a true showcase of Macfarlanes’ integrated capabilities in representing financial services executives, such as private equity managers, and in asset management M&A. In addition, when their private clients find themselves in unwanted investigations and disputes, Macfarlanes is well-equipped to handle issues from sanctions and tax investigations to civil frauds and other international enforcement matters. The firm recently coordinated litigation across multiple jurisdictions to obtain worldwide freezing orders for $180m on behalf of Wall Street investors arising out of a fraud concerning an Easter European privatisation programme. Macfarlanes is the only corporate team in the City that is ranked top 3 in both the "£100-800m" and "£800m and above" markets by Chambers 2025 corporate M&A rankings. Aside from staple private equity deals for long-time clients like Alchemy Partners, Caledonia Private Capital, and J.C. Flowers, the team has capitalised on recent M&A trends in the asset management market, acting for both buyers and sellers. Highlights from the last year include advising Investec on an all-share combination of Investec Wealth & Investment and Rathbones Group plc, Jupiter Asset Management on its assets purchase from Origin Asset Management, abrdn on the sale of its EU private equity business to Patria Investments, and Preqin on its £2.5 billion sale to BlackRock. While corporate and private client work laid the foundation for Macfarlanes, litigation has grown to become the firm’s largest practice by both revenue and headcount. The litigation practice covers a wide range of specialisms including trusts and probate, competition, tax, civil fraud, financial services, and construction, all of which received Band 2 and above rankings by the Legal 500 2025. In 2023, the team was named Commercial Litigation Team of the Year at the Legal Business Awards 2023 for representing Genius Sports, a global sports data and technology firm, in a dispute against its competitor Sportradar. Macfarlanes was instrumental in negotiating a settlement on the dispute, through which its client Genius Sport could retain the exclusive rights to collect and use live match data from major professional football leagues and protect their main source of revenue.