DWS partners stung with £90k cash call
05 June 2009
The state of the economy has forced Denton Wilde Sapte to issue a cash call to its partners, with an expectation that they will put an average of around £90,000 each back into the firm.

The firm announced this week that it had asked partners to pay back £1,000 per equity point into the firm's funds, so the cost will be greatest for the most senior partners. The firm claimed this was a strategic decision based on the fact that "the firm's capital had not been increased for four years" rather than a sign of the times. But if that was the case, why didn't it just withhold the relevant amount from the partners' profit distributions in the first place?

A cow made out of cash walking away from a Dentons partner in a physical interpretation of a cash call staged by RollOnFriday satirists yesterday

The reality is that Dentons has made nearly 40 lawyers redundant and asked some of its trainees to defer the start of their training contracts - so the recession has clearly hit the firm.

A cash call is not necessarily a sign of a firm in trouble. Clifford Chance did the same thing and doesn't seem to be disappearing up its own fundament just yet. Although Halliwells on the other hand...