BLG, Hill Dickinson, HBJ Gateley Wareing carve up the remains of Halliwells
Barlow Lyde & Gilbert, HBJ Gateley Wareing and Hill Dickinson have completed their acquisition of failed firm Halliwells.
Barlow Lyde & Gilbert, HBJ Gateley Wareing and Hill Dickinson have completed their acquisition of failed firm Halliwells.
Following several weeks of negotiations Barlow Lyde & Gilbert has agreed to take on the Manchester-based insurance business, comprising a 17-partner team including insurance partner Kevin Finnigan and an additional 220 members of staff including 80 fee-earners. It has also hired two litigation partners in London, Helen Bourne and Damian McPhun, and their respective teams.
The firm, which already has one floor of office space at Chancery Place in Manchester, is assessing whether it will need to take on additional space at Halliwells’ Manchester headquarters at Spinningfields.
HBJ Gateley Wareing will move into the Spinningfields building with the acquisition of Halliwells’ banking & finance, corporate, real estate, real estate litigation, corporate recovery, commercial litigation, intellectual property, employment, pensions and construction teams. Halliwells Manchester head Rod Waldie will run that office.
The national firm has hired a total of 40 partners in Manchester and three further partners in London, bringing its total number of hires from Halliwells, including fee-earners and support staff, to almost 200.
The Liverpool office will go to Hill Dickinson, which has hired 19 partners there including of Halliwells managing partner Jonathan Brown. The firm will also launch in Sheffield with the acquisition of 36 members of staff across the health, corporate, commercial litigation and property practices.
In a separate move Halliwells executive chairman Ian Austin will move over to smaller Manchester firm Heatons to run the commercial litigation department (12 July 2010).
Halliwells filed notice of its intention to appoint an administrator on 24 June, the same day that its quarterly rent bill was due. The move followed a 14 per cent drop in fee income for the 2009-10 financial year, increased indebtedness and significant rent obligations (25 June 2010).
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Readers' comments (31)
Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 12:13 pm
How nice that the partners who caused this are now sitting pretty in the new firms when 30+ staff made redundant at 5.00 p.m. yesterday with no notice pay, wages, holiday pay, redundancy etc! Not one of these partners attended the meeting! Lots more admin staff to follow.
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Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 1:10 pm
not to mention the trainees that got canned
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Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 1:23 pm
The partners dont have the backbone to attend such a meeting, in fact a jellyfish has more backbone than all of them put together!! Its a disgrace what has happened, hope they feel proud of what they havde achieved
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Metallica | 21-Jul-2010 2:44 pm
It'll be interesting to see if the SRA/Law Society step in to help the trainees.
The way the 30+ staff were treated sounds horrific. The partners should be ashamed.
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Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 3:02 pm
This episode will do serious lasting damage to the creditworthiness of commercial law firms.
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Saddened Partner | 21-Jul-2010 3:20 pm
Its shaming when those responsible are not prepared to face up to their actions. Common decency alone, says they should face their staff. There may be nothing that can be achieved but at least let them have their say.
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Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 3:47 pm
It seems that cash from the reverse premium was taken out the firm and the work has been moved on, leaving the landlord and the bank with the debts. The taxpayer will no doubt have to pay the staff redundancies. It's not an edifying spectacle.
I suspect that the banks will be looking long and hard at their limited liability lawyer customers in future.
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Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 3:52 pm
Partners who treat staff like dirt? They'll fit right in at BLG!
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Anonymous | 21-Jul-2010 4:11 pm
"This episode will do serious lasting damage to the creditworthiness of commercial law firms."
Oh come on, like lawyers have a terrific reputation in the first place.
As for credit worthiness, if you look at the PEP figures listed on this website you will see that most lawyers are hardly a bad financial risk.
Halliwells was just a badly run firm with greedy partners. We all have them, it is how you manage them that counts.
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William Arthur Nathaniel Keynes | 21-Jul-2010 4:52 pm
Great deal Gateleys (not!) Interesting they have signed up to a legacy Halliwells man running the Manc office. This is like leaving Dracula in charge of the blood bank. Naive in the extreme and a serious opportunity missed to assert some management control. The London office will also hardly be taking the market by storm..it should have been shut a long time ago and anyone good has left and its new recruits are frankly not very good.
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