Trowers & Hamlins' non-UK offices have posted a net-profit of just £100,000 for the 2014/15 financial year. That's a drop of 96% from £2.5m the previous year.

The firm's overall results are not bad, with net profit up 8% to £19.5m. However, 99.5% of that profit was generated by Trowers' UK offices in London, Birmingham, Exeter and Manchester. And its offices in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Dubai, Oman and Malaysia produced just 0.5%, or £20k profit each. 

It's clear that the firm has not had the best fortune in the Middle East. It closed its Jeddah office in 2011 after less than a year, it abandoned an exclusive alliance in Riyadh in 2012 and it closed its office in Egypt in 2014.  Trowers has also seen a number of senior defections in the Middle East this year. The firm's former head of the UAE, Abdullah Mutawi, and its head of litigation in the Middle East, Lucas Pitts, both jumped ship to Baker Botts. And its head of construction in Bahrain, Paula Boast, departed recently to Charles Russell Speechlys. 

How Trowers' Dubai office might look next year.

And it seems the UK offices are now having to cut costs to make up. Students have grumbled to RollOnFriday about obvious cost-cutting on Trowers' summer vacation scheme. At one social event, the students were only allowed to have three drinks, although perhaps this was just as a precautionary measure to stop grad rec staff getting wasted. And on another, they were taken on a cheap date to Nando's and limited to two sides per person.

A student requests an additional corn on the cob. How it might have looked.