Eversheds has negotiated a new bank facility enabling the firm to take out a £20m loan, the firm's limited liability partnership (LLP) filings have revealed.

The UK top 10 firm has swapped its short-term overdraft facility, which reduced from £12.7m in 2007-08 to £3.4m in 2008-09, in return for a £20m loan. The move saw cash in hand at the bank increase by almost £10m to £28.9m for the financial year.

Eversheds chief financial officer Kathryn Fleming told Legal Week: "The firm historically renegotiates lending facilities annually; during 2008 with the recession at its peak and when questions were raised about bank stability, there was a desire to maintain a level of certainty for the firm and therefore we opted for a three-year loan.

"We wanted a three-year facility during a recession to guarantee a good level of working capital should clients take longer to pay, which as it so happens they have not, this has therefore given a good amount of headroom between our lending facilities and our working capital requirements."

Eversheds also last year asked equity partners to contribute an extra £10,000 each in capital, totaling £1.9m, to help fund a programme of overseas investment – including new offices in Abu Dhabi and Doha – which the firm cited as a cause of the 20% decline in operating profits to £92m in 2008-09.

The highest-paid lawyer at the firm received £608,000 in 2008-09, a 29% drop on the previous year's figure of £860,000. When the firm reported its results for the last financial year, average profits per equity partner stood at £404,000.

Over the year, Eversheds reduced its total number of administrative support staff by 222. The firm attributed this to a combination of natural wastage and redundancies, with the firm centralising many of its support functions during the year, including the finance team.