Stewart, Bickerton battle for Clifford Chance London MP job
Clifford Chance London finance head Mark Stewart and London capital markets chief David Bickerton are set to go head-to-head in a battle to become the firm’s next City chief.
Mark Stewart
It is understood that Stewart is hoping to win the backing of the partnership by volunteering to reduce his position on the firm’s nine-year lockstep if he is elected.
Nominations for the post opened today, with anyone interested in the role being asked to put their name forward to the partnership via email.
Sources at the firm said Stewart had told the partnership that he did not view the job as a full-time position, believing that the successful candidate would have to commit a maximum of three days a week to the role.
However, as those three days would be spread across the full working week and would encroach on the two days devoted to fee-earning, Stewart has offered to take a reduction in lockstep points if he wins the vote.
As a plateau partner Stewart would currently be on 100 lockstep points, with each point being worth £8,700 at the end of the last financial year. It is unclear how many points he is proposing to drop.
Sources at the firm said that Bickerton put his name forward this morning.
David Bickerton
The post of London managing partner has become vacant after incumbent Jeremy Sandelson, who would have come to the end of his term in December, was elected to the global litigation head role (7 October 2009).
Sandelson had stood against former Asian litigation head Denis Brock.
Stewart, who specialises in acquisition finance, has headed the firm’s London banking practice since May 2006, when he took over from Tim Plews following an uncontested election. His four-year term is due to come to an end next year.
Bickerton has also headed his practice group since 2006, taking over management of the merged equity and debt capital markets teams in January 2007.
Both partners’ names were linked to the London managing partner position the last time round, although neither went forward to the vote.
Stewart and Bickerton did not return calls for comment.
Readers' comments (9)
mary | 14-Oct-2009 2:25 pm
David Bickerton will need to run a very strong campaign to beat someone who's willing to take a hit in his own pocket. Let the battle comence!
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Redundant CC lawyer | 14-Oct-2009 5:27 pm
Whoever gets the MP job actually deserves a pay rise - how an earth can you put a firm like Clifford Chance back into shape? It's a complete mess.
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Anonymous | 14-Oct-2009 5:44 pm
David Bickerton is a fully paid-up member of the human race and would be a great leader. Mark Stewart would be a disaster; I'm sure that he's a fine lawyer but he doesn't know the first thing about leadership or management, as demonstrated by his comments about doing the job on a part-time basis. His arrogance is breath-taking and shows just how much work is required to turn CC around if the Partners feel that a business with a multimillion pound turnover can be managed part-time. While I have respect for many of the people at CC, it would in some respects be entertaining to see Mark Stewart get elected just so that we could watch him fail.
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Anonymous | 14-Oct-2009 10:54 pm
Mark Stewert is probably the finest lawyer at CC - and he has hair!
He's the best and he will win. Annonymous above clearly knows nothing!
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Anonymous | 15-Oct-2009 10:21 am
Whether it's Stewart or Stewert, the fact that he's a good lawyer is not the point. There is no direct correlation between legal skills and management skills. In fact, a tenacious, detail-oriented and "fight-my-corner-at-all-costs" type of lawyer is fundamentally unsuited to leading a 3,000 person organisation. It's the same analogy as in professional sport, whereby the best players very rarely become great managers.
This is one of the problems that most law firms have failed to deal with, since Partners are promoted first and foremost for the legal skills; management skills are seen as a nice-to-have and are "bolted on" at a later stage.
Amongst other attributes, genuine leadership requires selflessness and empathy - qualities that lawyers don't always value. There are few lawyers with the ability to step up and demonstrate genuine firmwide leadership to the extent that they inspire the whole constituency. Don't forget that around half the employees of a law firm are support staff; someone like Mark Stewart will actively alienate the 50% who are not lawyers, and will probably take great pleasure in doing so. This will be portrayed by his supporters as a sign of "strong leadership".
There are some partners at CC who are more balanced and nuanced in their approach. David Bickerton is certainly one of them. His collaborative and engaging style will be more successful in leading the whole firm, not just the lawyers.
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Anonymous | 16-Oct-2009 3:54 pm
Isn't it time that law firms woke up to the fact that electing leaders is a poor way of running a business? Especially if the candidate believes managing a business the size of CC's London business can be done part time. Amazingly naive or supremely arrogant.
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Anonymous | 19-Oct-2009 4:28 pm
David B is probably too nice and too normal to get elected. A pity really as he's probably want CC needs, given the mess it's in.
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Anonymous | 20-Oct-2009 10:57 am
Some of the best law firm MPs I have ever seen in action do not come from a legal background. Better to have a CEO from an accounting background, if you ask me - that way they might have a better handle on how to keep the costs down and employees in jobs. In any case, how can you even begin to justify a basic "points" salary of £870,000 a year, then pay your support staff less than 4% of that as an average? And then say you need to make redundancies?!?! Three times in a year! It beggars belief. I say neither should be MP!
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brenna | 22-Oct-2009 7:31 pm
When is there going to be a black magic circle MP???
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