DLA Piper International moves to April year for budgets and promotions

DLA Piper is set to overhaul the financial management of its UK and international offices, moving to a separate year-end from the US for all budgeting and partner profits reviews.

DLA Piper's UK, Asia, Middle East and continental Europe offices will now work to a separate financial year-end in April, while the firm's US offices remain on a calendar year. This will shift budgeting, partner promotions and reviews of profit allocations for the UK/international practice to the end of April.

The changes were voted in by partners in DLA Piper International this month and will take effect from 1 May 2010.

The move ends the system viewed as confusing by some partners in which DLA Piper International attempted to marry its budgeting and promotion round with its US counterpart, despite the two businesses being financially separate and having different accounting year-ends.

The firm's global board will still assess the business based on a calendar period in terms of strategy, business integration and key clients and therefore DLA Piper will still produce global financial results for these purposes.

DLA Piper decided not to financially integrate its international and US operations in 2008. It had initially publicly stated its intention to financially integrate following the tripartite merger with the legacy UK practice and US duo Piper Rudnick and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich at the beginning of 2005.

DLA Piper chief financial officer Paul Edwards commented: "This decision is a real no-brainer. It is all about simplification. Partners need to be focused on clients and work and not wasting their time on accounting andinternal finance matters. We needed to make sure profits are aligned on a 12-month period."

He added: "The move is entirely supported by our US colleagues. It is an important step to allow theglobal firm to concentrate onfurthering our business integration,which is where the real benefits accrue to our clients."

The decision will be seen as a sign of the challenge of integrating global law firms, given that accounting and tax issues make forging a single partnership across the US and Europe difficult to achieve.