Farrer & Co woos partners

ROYAL solicitors Farrer & Co is beefing up its private client base by poaching Stephenson Harwood's head of corporate tax and swallowing the

remainder of Rowe & Maw's private client department.

Stephenson Harwood partner John Carrell is heading for Farrers, where he

will be joined by Rowe & Maw's head of the private client department.

Carrell, who practised at Stephenson Harwood for 18 years, is set to head

a specialist tax team which provides advice to private, institutional and

corporate clients.

Richard Powles, who heads up Rowe & Maw's private client department,

starts this week. One assistant is going with him while the rest of the

department will be redeployed in other Rowe & Maw departments.

Powles was the last partner in the firm doing private client work

following the departure - as exclusively revealed in The Lawyer (3 May) -

of James Denker and Penny Chapman, who quit to join Westminster firm

Bircham & Co's charity unit.

As department head, Powles undertook a strategic review of the provision

of a private client service at the City firm, says a Rowe & Maw spokesman.

"His conclusion was that it no longer sat well within the firm. In effect

he managed himself out of a job," says the spokesman.

Powles, in his early 50s, was made head of private client at Rowe & Maw

after stepping down as managing partner last year.