Howard Kennedy launches affordable housing practice ahead of FSI merger
Pre-merger Howard Kennedy has raided City firm Devonshires again to launch an affordable housing team.
Mark Dembovsky
The West End firm has taken two partners, Susan Hall and Frances Leung, with Hall joining as head of affordable housing.
The second swoop follows the hire of ex-Devonshires senior partner Allan Hudson as a consultant in the property team in May 2012 (4 June 2012).
The firm is close to going live on its £45m tie-up with Finers Stephens Innocent – a deal that has been given a 1 February completion date (19 November 2012).
In the meantime, CEO Mark Dembovsky has been keen to maintain his focus on the performance of his firm despite the demands of merger discussions.
As part of this the firm announced a redundancy consultation before Christmas affecting up to 10 support staff (22 November 2012). The final number of job cuts has been confirmed as nine.
Hall spent eight years with British Coal on pension fund investment work before moving to DJ Freeman as head of property and later Olswang.
She regularly acts for housing associations on large scale acquisitions and advises registered providers of social housing.
Leung worked closely with Hall at Devonshires, having joined as a senior associate from DAC Beachcroft.
Howard Kennedy cut its property department 12 months ago after entering into redundancy talks with six non-equity partners in a bid to boost financial performance (14 February 2012).
However, the firm’s property head Paul Springhall said the firm is looking forward to expanding again.
He said: “Investing in the social housing sector is a significant move for Howard Kennedy and stresses our commitment to growth in key areas.”
Readers' comments (4)
Anonymous | 15-Jan-2013 11:28 am
Screams of desperation
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Anonymous | 15-Jan-2013 9:42 pm
A positive step forward for a business that can afford to play in the January transfer window. Sour grapes will always be sour! Good luck HKFSI. Actually well played!
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Anonymous | 21-Jan-2013 10:01 am
Wont be long before they are packing their bags if the management dont change their ways at HK.......... its all about money not a decent working environment and treatment of staff!! They use other people from better law firms joining them to boost their image in the press to help them along the way!!!!
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Anonymous | 21-Jan-2013 2:21 pm
That is a bit harsh, they are just trying to turn around a failing business. It does however seem like they are throwing all of their efforts in at once so maybe the extent of how badly HK are doing is being distorted. The fact of the matter is that HK have been in need of a major overhaul for some time and given the market at the moment it may not be as easy to do this as it once was. I do agree with you however that certain areas of management need to be changed and the slap dash approach that they deal with Property transactions in general is just one example of an area that needs reviewing.
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