Burness Paull ranked number one legal dealmaker in Scotland

Burness Paull LLP has secured its position as Scotland’s biggest and busiest transactional corporate law firm in Business Insider’s list of the top performing legal dealmakers.

The firm heads the 2015 performance league table, chalking up 155 deals with a combined value of £16.9 billion. The figures do not include the substantial volume of business where clients have requested confidentiality.

The tally shows Burness Paull, which has done deals in more than 60 countries over the last three years.

Burness Paull chairman Philip Rodney, who is planning celebratory events for the firm’s 480-strong team, described the externally audited figures as “an amazing collective effort”, adding that they “give an objective confirmation of what we have known for a few years, that Burness Paull is now Scotland’s most entrepreneurial and responsive corporate law brand, and the one most closely in tune with the heartbeat of corporate Scotland.”

Mr Rodney said that much of the volume of deals were driven through Burness Paull’s successful international peer-partnership model, where it seeks out strategic alliances with similar best-in-class independent firms across the world.

“Most of the big deals have got an international dimension, whether it’s been oil and gas, or financial services, technology, or property and infrastructure” he added.

In its submission to Business Insider, the firm included transactions in the fields of M&A, finance, new investments.

Mark Ellis, a partner in Burness Paull’s corporate finance team, said “It’s easy for firms to make claims about the strength of their transactional corporate business but the beauty of the Scottish Business Insider list is an objective measure of the great deals carried out by our 110-strong corporate team.

“For several years we have felt able to claim that we have been leading the field in Scotland. What we love most about this news is that it’s a clear objective confirmation of that fact.”

Mr Ellis added that he hoped and expected Burness Paull to consolidate its strong performance over the course of 2016: “Already this year we have a good flow of transactions coming through both in the Scottish and international markets. We have no intention of resting on our laurels.”

Several of the deals won by Burness Paul in 2015 made the news in their own right, including high-profile work for KKR, Linn Products, Weir Group, Wood Group and Standard Life.