Sankar Mahalingham took over as managing director of LawDeb's pension trusteeship and governance business in May last year
Law Debenture Corporation has released its results for the year ended 31 December 2024.
The investment trust and fiduciary services provider said its share price total return had outperformed the FTSE Actuaries All-Share Index with a total return of 15.9% for 2024, compared with 9.5% the previous year.
Law Debenture said its independent professional services (IPS) business – which includes its pension trusteeship and governance arm as well as its corporate trust, corporate secretarial, whistleblowing services and process agent businesses – had posted a "solid performance", with net revenue increasing by 6.2% and a valuation up 5.1% to £194.5m.
The firm said its IPS arm had been a "key differentiator" for the firm – noting that, while only accounting for around 19% of its net asset value, the IPS business had funded around one-third of its dividends over the past decade.
It also stated the division's strong cashflow and consistent mid-to high single digit growth rates enabled its investment managers to "build a more flexible portfolio" that includes both income and growth-focused stocks, rather than having to chase yield.
It said IPS had another year of good underlying profit growth in 2024 – noting that corporate services and corporate trust were the strongest performers, achieving net revenue growth of 11% and 12.7%. It said pensions had a slight net revenue decline in 2024 following an exceptionally high revenue growth rate of over 20% in 2023 – falling back 4% from £17.4m in 2023 to £16.7m last year.
Source: Law Debenture
Law Debenture said compound revenue growth in its pensions business since 2017 has been 10.6%. It said growth in 2023 was an "exceptional" 21.3% following on from the fallout of the LDI crisis of late 2022.
The firm reiterated its dialogue with investors and analysts over the past year that it believed 2023 was an "outlier" in terms of revenue growth and that 2024 was "always going to be a difficult year in terms of comparator".
Overall, it added compound growth in revenues over the past two years was 7.9%, which Law Debenture said was "broadly in line with the seven-year revenue growth rate for this business".
It said: "We remain confident of our ability to grow this business solidly over the business cycle."
Over the year, Law Debenture added a number of appointments – including for the Medical Research Council, Tilney Pension Fund, Kellog Brown & Root and Saint-Gobain Ireland.
The firm said its Pegasus business also continued to see demand across a number of different services areas – including support to in-house teams, project management support, data/GMP projects, provider review and selection, General Code support and trustee effectiveness reviews.
Law Debenture said it welcomed seven new members into its pension team in 2024. In May, its new managing director, Sankar Mahalingham, took over, with a new management team including Jane Beverley as head of trusteeship and Mark Williamson as head of Pegasus.
