Garretts dealt blow with loss of corporate partner to Dibbs

Garretts, the associate firm of Arthur Andersen, has lost its third partner in two months - leaving the Leeds office with only two corporate partners.

Corporate finance partner Roland Todd joins the Leeds office of Dibb Lupton Alsop this month.

His departure comes weeks after the founder of Garretts' Manchester office, head of banking Susan Molloy, announced she was leaving for Halliwell Landau.

At the same time share scheme partner Shabnam Qasim announced his departure for PricewaterhouseCoopers' practice in Birmingham.

But sources close to Garretts say the Leeds office has been hit the hardest by the raft of partner departures.

At the beginning of 1999, the office had 11 partners. It now has only three - Nick Painter, Richard Bonner and tax partner Antony Betts.

Head of the office Bonner took over the role in May when former incumbent Sean Lippell left for Addleshaw Booth & Co. Three other partners left at the same time.

But Bonner denies the departures have left the office under-staffed.

He says: "We have two partners, Nick Painter and myself, and we are extremely busy. We have a fantastic volume of work at the moment.

"The department will grow organically over time and I am sure we will have about four or five corporate partners."

One source says Todd had been unhappy at the firm for some time.

Todd is the second partner Dibbs has poached from Garretts.

In July it recruited the founder and head of the corporate development practice Stephen Devlin.