UK insurance law firm Kennedys has doubled its office space in Madrid as it continues to shake off the impacts of the pandemic to grow its global footprint. 

The London-based firm’s 15-strong Madrid team, led by partners Isodor Ugena, Olivia Delagrange and Alfonso De Ramos, have relocated to a fifth-floor office space in the Castellana 40 Bis building as part of the firm’s ‘WorkWise’ global workplace transformation programme.

At 3,000 sq ft, the new space is more than double the size of the 1,200 sq ft office the firm previously occupied in the Cuzco IV building at Paseo de Castellana 141 and boasts amenities including access to a private roof terrace, the firm said. The eight-floor building also features high energy efficiency levels and is pre-certified LEED Gold. 

Kennedys’ Spanish arm, which opened in 2005, focuses on matters including insurance and reinsurance, construction and engineering, property and energy, maritime and international trade and aviation and cyber claims. Ugena, Delagrange and De Ramos are supported by a team of three senior associates, four associates and two legal directors. 

One of the legal directors, Susana Martinez Cabrera, joined Kennedys last year after nine years at AXA XL, where she most recently served as the company's EMEA and Latin America head. She currently serves as Kennedys' head of financial lines and cyber for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), acting as part of the firm's Miami regional hub office for the LAC in Madrid. 

Kennedys said the choice to forgo downsizing its office space marks a shift away from a trend that has cropped up during the pandemic as firms looked to move away from focusing on physical office spaces in favour of improving work-from-home models and retooling their approaches to using office space post-Covid. The firm implemented its own hybrid working policy last summer that permitted lawyers across all 43 of its offices to work from home 'up to 40% of the time'. 

Ugena said: “Having introduced our global hybrid working policy to support our colleagues to work from home if they wish, we also want to provide a welcoming environment in which colleagues can work alongside each other and entertain our clients. Our new office will allow us to do this and we are delighted with our new space.”

The firm has increased physical office spaces for a number of its teams of late, including in Manchester, Melbourne and Hong Kong. Bucking the trend is its London headquarters, with Kennedys announcing earlier this month it will cut its office space there by 17,000 sq ft when it moves a stone's throw away from its current space in Fenchurch Avenue to the city's iconic Walkie-Talkie building this December.

The firm has also expanded its global footprint with five new offices since the start of 2020 in Leeds, San Francisco, Oman, Tel Aviv and Perth. 

Kennedys’ global turnover hit £264m in the 12 months to the end of April 2021, an 11% increase on the previous financial year. In Europe, revenue jumped 45% to £19m, with North America (including Bermuda) also posting double-digit growth, rising 15% to £46m. In its main UK market, revenue rose 8.5% to £151m.