Eversheds drops private client in Leeds to focus on corporate

Eversheds' Leeds office is off-loading its private client practice to niche firm Wrigleys.

Eversheds' head of private client, partner Peter Chadwick, will take assistants Carole Gibbs, Andrew Wrig- lesworth and Gerald Tyne, as well as administration staff, with him.

The move was prompted by Eversheds' decision to focus the Leeds office entirely on corporate and commercial work.

The firm's other regional offices will continue to offer a private client service for the time being.

Managing partner at Eversheds' Leeds office David Ansbro says: "We are now a major corporate law firm.

"As with any business, you look at what your main business is and much of our competition has taken the same view."

Wrigleys was formed three years ago after Dibb Lupton Alsop demerged its private client practice.

Ansbro says: "It started with Dibbs, and then Hammonds sent their private client team there, and now we are."

Chadwick will become a joint senior partner when he moves to Wrigleys, joining the incumbents Matthew Wrigley and Ann Duchart.

Chadwick says: "Eversheds' focus in Leeds is now understandably on major commercial work.

"I am anxious to secure the best possible service and continuity for private clients."

A trust and personal tax specialist, Chadwick joined the national practice in 1989, after his family firm, Hepworth & Chadwick, merged with Eversheds.

Out of the leading six firms in Leeds, only half now have private client practices. They are Addleshaw Booth & Co, Pinsent Curtis and Walker Morris.