2013 – the year in which Advokatfirman Vinge celebrated its 30th anniversary – was a successful one for the firm. The year was characterised, overall, by a continuation of the market’s wait-and-see attitude to M&A, but there were clear signs of a revival in stock market confidence.
In 1983, Vinge became the first firm in Sweden to establish bases with a so-called full service concept in the country’s three major conurbations, i.e. an offering that covered every area of corporate and business law. 30 years later, Vinge is still one of the few full service firms operating in Sweden. At the time of its foundation, Vinge had 110 employees (including 39 partners – 38 men and 1 woman) and posted a turnover of almost SEK 73 million in its first 18 months of operation.
2013 in brief – facts and figures (2012’s figures in parentheses):
• 2013 turnover: SEK 824 million (SEK 834 m)
• Number of employees: 424 (449)
• Total number of partners: 76 (78)
• Number of female partners: 11 (11)
• Total number of lawyers: 201 (211)
• Number of female lawyers: 112 (113)
“Turnover may have fallen by 1 per cent, but the underlying fee income has increased slightly, which is good news in a market where overall M&A market activity, for example, has been characterised by a “wait-and-see” approach,” says Maria-Pia Hope, CEO of Vinge and Managing Partner for Vinge in Stockholm. “We are delighted to have topped Mergermarket’s league table again this year, and hence retained our position as the most frequently engaged legal advisors for M&A. It’s also reassuring to see our strategy of being a full service firm proving its worth, year after year.”
“We’re keen to see ourselves as the most entrepreneurial firm in the market, so we’re particularly pleased to be on the cutting edge in legal areas in which Swedish law firms have previously been somewhat inactive. And that’s why we’re so pleased that our concentration on customs and export law has been so well-received,” says Charlotte Forssander, Managing Partner for Vinge in Gothenburg. “We’ve also focused heavily on intellectual property law in 2013 and are delighted by the international prize we were recently awarded in this field.”
As Rikard Azelius, Managing Partner for Vinge in Skåne, says, “At the end of 2013, we were seeing clear signs of a recovery in terms of stock market confidence, and our stock market group was involved in all of the Large Cap listings on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm exchange. The stock market is usually an early indicator of the general appetite for M&A and the increased activity levels in this market allows us to look forward with every confidence to doing even more business in 2014.”
