Review: Mixed year for the North West’s professionals
WHILE the axe has been swinging at law firms across the city, it was all change at the top among three of the ‘big four” firms of accountants.
While Patrick Loftus remained firmly at the helm of Deloitte, PwC stalwart David McKeith announced he was stepping down as senior partner and retiring from the firm after 19 years. Nick Boden, who leads the regional assurance practice, has taken over as senior partner.
He has been with PwC for more than 20 years and qualified in 1989. He became a partner in 1997 and moved to Manchester from London in 2003.
Mr McKeith, last year’s president of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, has become chairman of Manchester’s Halle Orchestra and says he is is loooking for “interesting” non-executive roles.
At KPMG, regional chairman Malcolm Edge relinquished his dual role of senior partner to Jonathan Hurst who has been an audit partner for 13 years, leading KPMG’s relationships with corporate giants such as the Co-operative Group, JD Sports Fashion, Pets at Home and Adidas.
Mr Edge has taken on a national role as head of the UK market.
Meanwhile at Ernst & Young, Jan Gregory also stepped down from the helm as senior partner and was succeeded by corporate recovery partner, Simon Allport.
Elsewhere, Graeme Whittaker returned from Grant Thornton’s London office to once again take up the role of managing partner in Manchester.
He previously held the position from 1993 to 2007, and has been with the firm for 25 years. Mr Whittaker succeeded John Shinnick who has taken on the position of head of finance in Manchester.
While there were some redundancies at accountancy firms in the North West, it was the law firms that made the headlines as falling fees from the credit crunch and property slump saw the potential for hundreds of jobs cuts.
Six lawyers at Eversheds in Manchester faced the axe, while in early December DLA revealed it was cutting around from 40 staff, half of them fee earners, from its six UK offices which include Liverpool and Manchester. Joint chief executive Nigel Knowles said the cuts were a result of the downturn. Other national firms to cut jobs include Addleshaw Goddard and Hammonds.
Meanwhile among the North West firms, Halliwells was one of the first to make redundancies with 12 people losing their jobs in the spring.
It has since begun its third round of consultations which involved lawyers in its corporate finance and banking teams. That followed 26 jobs cut from its real estate. It is believed that around 50 people will have lost their jobs at the firm by the end of the year.
Rival Cobbetts has also been forced to make cuts, and reports suggest the potential number of redundancies among support staff and fee earners could be as high as 70, while more than 10 people have lost their jobs at Pannone including director of communications and equity partner Deborah Ascott-Jones.
Other North West firms to axe jobs include Dickinson Dees, Fox Hayes and Ward Hadaway which has made more than 20 people redundant.
