– And Eyes Growth Further Afield
On the back of a tremendously successful financial year, which saw Durham City’s leading law firm, Swinburne Maddison LLP (Swinburne Maddison), end the year significantly above targeted revenue, the firm has announced five further appointments to its corporate and commercial team providing the strength and depth necessary to target expansion.
The firm now boasts one of the largest corporate and commercial teams in the North East with twelve fee earning staff comprising three partners, a legal director, two associate solicitors, three solicitors, two trainee solicitors and a paralegal.
Although factored into the firm’s development strategy, the appointments have been made possible now due to the quality, size and value of instructions Swinburne Maddison continues to receive.
The five new lawyers each bring various skills to the corporate and commercial team:
Matt Ray joins from the Teesside office of a national law firm with experience in M&A and corporate reorganisations and will provide support principally in respect of tax-led solvent reorganisation work.
Also joining the team is Jess Stevens who has six years of post-qualification experience in private client services focusing on lifetime planning arrangements and family trusts. She will be advising clients on share and asset sales, acquisitions and management buy-outs along with providing wider transactional support to the team.
Recently qualified Ashley Patterson, who has trained with the firm, will provide support to all partners in the team in respect of transactional matters, and completing the current line-up of recruits are Niamh Wilson and Brooke Jefferson, who have accepted training contracts in the corporate team.
Swinburne Maddison recently reported that 2022 was a record year for the corporate team, having advised upon 27 regional deals (which saw the firm registered on Experian’s MA& North East data base in 2022 as the sixth most active advisor in the region) as well as many others both nationally and internationally. This included the investment by Argenbright Holdings LLC in Amberstone Security Group Limited and the subsequent acquisition of The Protector Group Limited.
The team also advised on the investment made by Accel-KKR into Singletrack, a company that has been supported by the law firm from start up to this milestone event, as well as Maven Capital’s investment in Pragmatic Semiconductor.
Speaking about the future, partner and head of the corporate and commercial team, Martyn Tennant, said:
“I believe the depth of resource in our corporate and commercial team now allows us to push our service offering to the next level. We are now able to field a corporate and commercial team that is comparable in size to those of any regional practice, meaning that more complex and labour-intensive engagements are firmly within the team’s capabilities.”
These latest appointments bring the headcount at the firm to 79.
