Halliwells left with one healthcare partner after Beachcroft raid
Beachcroft is hiring a 10-strong team of lawyers from Halliwells’ healthcare practice, leaving the latter with just one partner in that group.
Andrew Peel
Partners Christopher Briggs and Simon Wortley are set to join Beachcroft with four associates and four solicitors. Andrew Peel is the sole remaining healthcare partner at Halliwells. He heads the practice.
Negotiations over the team’s start date are ongoing, but it is expected to join Beachcroft’s Manchester office ahead of its relocation to the city’s Spinningfields district in late May.
In April 2008 Beachcroft raided Eversheds for healthcare chief David Weatherburn, who joined the firm with a team of 27 lawyers (17 April 2008).
Head of healthcare Nigel Montgomery said the move would fill a gap in Beachcroft’s national healthcare practice. “It [healthcare] is absolutely a growth area and has grown substantially over the last three years,” he said.
Halliwells managing partner Jonathan Brown said: “Halliwells will still maintain strong healthcare teams in Manchester and Sheffield under the leadership of Andrew Peel. We’re already recruiting to replace the leaving personnel and Halliwells remains on all panels for existing clients.”
In December, insurance firm Kennedys took a team of eight partners and a total of 70 staff from Halliwells’ Sheffield office to launch a base in the city (18 December 2008).
This came after Plexus Law launched a Manchester office with a group of Halliwells insurance liability partners (9 November 2009).
Readers' comments (10)
Anonymous | 10-Feb-2010 7:19 pm
Is there actually anyone left at Halliwells now?
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Anonymous | 10-Feb-2010 9:14 pm
Perhaps Mr Brown would care to explain why so many people are heading for the exits.
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Sonny & Cher | 10-Feb-2010 9:35 pm
Oh dear, this comes hot on the heels of their £19M re-finance deal with the bank. Add in the £4M lease finance and the crippling rent liabilities, the loss of most of their decent junior equity partners and you have a firm which is in trouble. It is open season on Halliwells as other firms poach the teams they want. At this rate all that will be left is some shiny offices, a debt mountain and a group of people that nobody else wants. As Cher once sang "If I could turn back time, if I could find a way, I would never have taken that reverse premium, no way"
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amazed | 11-Feb-2010 1:25 am
halliwells = not-go-very-wells
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Anonymous | 11-Feb-2010 4:20 pm
How many of the equity partners who shared in the Spinningfields reverse premium (without telling the salaried partners) remain at the firm?
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Rural bliss | 11-Feb-2010 5:06 pm
They must be a great firm to work for.
The trouble is that this sort of regular defection undermines the confidence of both the employees and the clients, and can easily become a downward spiral.
And unfortunately those debts don't disappear with the lawyers.
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Anonymous | 11-Feb-2010 5:12 pm
There were no salaried partners - they were fixed share members and they did not get a bean despite them having an equity stake in the business. They found out that they were not in the "fill your pockets club" when they read about it in the press. They did not even tie in the equity partners who were in the "fill your pockets" club and many of them left. And the Management Team of the Year award goes to..........
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Anonymous | 11-Feb-2010 7:19 pm
Now is not the time for cheap jokes.
I call on Simon Cowell (or if he is too busy, Rage Against The Machine) to put-together a benefit single. A version of Gwen Guthrie's "Ain't Nothing Going On But The Rent" is my suggestion.
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Pop Idol | 11-Feb-2010 8:24 pm
With Mick Hucknall weighing in with a haunting rendition of "money too tight to mention" - he likes a benefit gig does Mick
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Anonymous | 13-Feb-2010 11:48 am
Halliwells-Happywells-not so Happywells!!
To the Partners-no point in delaying the inevitable that ship is sinking!!!
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