The world’s first publicly traded law firm, Australia’s Slater & Gordon, has been a poster child for outside investment in law practices. In the five years after its May 2007 initial public offering, Slater’s stock price more than tripled in value, and its share issuances funded a dramatic U.K. expansion through increasingly ambitious acquisitions.
Now Slater is seeing the other side of being a public company. Its share price fell by half after news broke in late June that U.K. regulators were investigating its most recent acquisition target, and the firm also admitted to accounting errors of its own. It faces short-selling and harsh public criticism from investors.
