The Lawyer revealed in July how a four partner committee was tasked with coming up with restructuring plan and proposed that Whitfield be replaced (The Lawyer, 21 July).
The far-reaching proposals came as the Bristol-based firm saw profitability tumble at the 2007-08 year end to £6.5m, down 37 per cent from the £9.6m reported in the previous year.
Average profit per equity partner also plummeted, falling £54,000 from £234,000 to £180,000 – a slide of 23 per cent – despite the equity partner headcount having dropped from 41 to 33 in the last year.
Manning’s election as chief executive is a bid to reverse the firm’s fortunes. Manning, who was previously chief operating officer, has been set the ambitious target of improving profitability by 37 per cent by the 2008-09 year end. This will put the firm at £8.4m at the next year-end, lower than £9.6m reported in 2006-07.
The firm is to concentrate on four key areas in an effort to underpin growth: health, local government, private sector and corporate.
Whitfield will return to a fee-earning role in the commercial team.
About time...
From: Anonymous
This should have happened over 18 months ago! The writing has been on the wall a long, long time.
A classic line from Manning is that 'law firms are either hunters or gatherers' - lets hope BB starts to hunt using a machine gun rather than the outdated spears they have been using!
An exceptence of expensive offices in London and Birmingham may be next on the plan for Manning. They have lots of space in Bristol to fill up so moving everyone down to Bristol may make some sense! Pennies make pounds...
Yet again accuracy is sacrificed
From: Anonymous
All for the sake of a good headline. Is it just me or is a trade paper meant to be accurate rather than just aim for sensationalism. The Chief Exec was not voted out. I understood from previous articles that a decision had already been made for Stuart to move to a senior partner role. The vote was on the management structure going forward. Heaven forbid that accuracy gets in the way of a headline.