Firmwide head count at Hogan Lovells grew by 156 full-time positions, or 6 percent, to about 2,516 total lawyers in 2015. The partnership is now at 805 lawyers, a 2 percent increase from 2014. The firm opened new offices in Sydney and Perth, Australia, which total five lawyers.
Immelt highlighted the firm’s corporate practice as having its best year since 2006. In all, the firm handled mergers and acquisitions worth more than $137 billion combined. Corporate work made up about a third of the firm’s engagements, with litigation comprising almost another third.
“We’ll see what 2016 brings. There’s obviously jittery nerves out there,” Immelt said. “It’s just a matter of the economy. What we still see is a huge amount of uninvested capital.”
The deal engagements in 2015 included advising SABMiller on its merger with Anheuser-Busch InBev; Audi, BMW Group and Daimler’s acquisition of a Nokia digital mapping business unit, and General Electric’s spinoff of its real estate division.
Immelt is the brother of GE chief executive Jeff Immelt, yet the firm’s relationship with GE dates back years, he said. Former firm chief executive Warren Gorrell Jr., who co-led Hogan Lovells through its merger and global expansion six years ago and handed over the management post to Immelt in mid-2014, led the GE transaction work and other cross-border deal work, Immelt said.
