People: Withers & Rogers; Eversheds Sutherland; Nicholas Associates Group; and more

Two patent attorneys have been promoted to the partnership at European intellectual property firm, Withers & Rogers, as part of its ongoing strategic expansion. 

The newly promoted partners are Nicola Anderson and Helen Henderson, who joined the firm in 2008 and 2011 respectively.

Fiona McBride, chair and partner at Withers & Rogers and a member of CITMA, said: “A key strand of our strategy involves the development of talented people; creating rewarding career paths in their sectors of choice.

“Both Helen and Nicola’s promotions are demonstrations of our continued success in creating a supportive and rewarding culture for everyone.”

Based at the firm’s Sheffield office, Anderson has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and qualified as a UK Patent Attorney in 2012 and a European Patent Attorney in 2015.

She has extensive experience in advising clients in the transportation and packaging sectors and leads the firm’s Rail sector group. 

She is known for her editorial contributions to Freight Industry Times and Transportation & Logistics International.

Based at the Bristol office, Henderson has a doctorate in neuroendocrinology and qualified as a UK and European Patent Attorney in 2010.

Since joining Withers & Rogers in 2011, she has played an integral role in the expansion of the firm’s Life Sciences and Chemistry group and has a special interest in all fields of modern biotechnology, including cell and gene therapy. She also heads up the firm’s Higher Education sector group.

McBride added: “Having launched our Paris office last year, and strengthened our team in Munich too, this year we are once again focusing on strengthening the UK-based partnership.

“Helen and Nicola are both deserving and welcome additions. Our international clients increasingly look to us to give them strategic, multi-jurisdictional advice about their intellectual property, and our pan-European footprint means we are ready to meet their needs.”

:::

Eversheds Sutherland has strengthened its restructuring capabilities with the hire of Barney Smedley.

Smedley, who joins the global law firm’s Leeds office from DLA Piper, has a wealth of restructuring experience and is recognised for advising financial institutions, investors, insolvency practitioners and boards of directors on high value and high stakes restructuring and insolvency assignments.

He has played a leading role in a number of restructurings in the retail and consumer goods sectors including the insolvencies of the Beales department store group, and various phases of the Mamas & Papas turnaround.

He also advises across various other sectors including real estate, manufacturing and financial services.

Nick Swiss, head of finance group, Eversheds Sutherland, said: “Barney’s appointment reinforces our ability to successfully advise our clients on their increasingly complex issues, and to consistently deliver the tailored, high quality legal advice and commercial insights they require.

“Barney’s cross-border experience and invaluable restructuring expertise, honed within a variety of sectors, make him a perfect fit for our wide-ranging client base.

“I’m thrilled to welcome him to the team and very much look forward to working with him.”

Andrew Jordan, head of UK restructuring, said: “Barney is a welcome addition to our restructuring practice and will enhance our restructuring capabilities particularly in the retail and consumer sector space, keeping us at the forefront of this increasingly diverse and highly competitive market.

“He brings with him extensive cross-border restructuring experience which will prove invaluable to the varying needs of our clients.”

Smedley added: “I am really excited to join Eversheds Sutherland in order to build on its first class restructuring offering.

“The team already boasts an enviable client base, a fantastic global platform and an excellent national team of restructuring lawyers.

“I’m looking forward to drawing on my experience gained from nearly 20 years at DLA Piper and working with my new colleagues to deliver market-leading restructuring solutions both locally and globally.”

:::

Apprentice to boardroom recruitment specialist, Nicholas Associates Group (NAG), has strengthened its executive board following the appointment of Kelly Kendall as chief operating officer.

Kendall has 24 years of experience in recruitment and joins the group from Kelly Services UK, where she was vice president country manager UK & Ireland.

During her extensive career, she has worked her way from consultant to a number of senior management roles in permanent and temporary recruitment, operations and strategic planning.

Nick Cragg, executive chairman of Rotherham-headquartered NAG, said: “Many of Kelly’s achievements have resulted from her ability to develop strategies and value propositions that deliver carefully thought-out expansion, high growth, and profitability in a way that also fosters a spirit of inclusion and teamwork for clients and her employers.

“She will be a great asset to our management team, and we are really looking forward to working with her.”

Kendall will work alongside the NAG board to drive the vision, strategy, and people initiatives to ensure NAG is best positioned for growth.

She will assist the board with its quest to provide operational excellence by improving systems and processes and optimising resource management and cross-functional collaboration to drive success.

She said: “Joining NAG is a culmination of a journey that began in 1998 when I first entered the recruitment industry.

“NAG has always been a brand I’ve admired, and I am thrilled to now be a part of it.

“I will strive to motivate our teams to better enable them in delivering excellent services to clients and candidates.”

:::

Hull-based performance marketing specialist, Summit, has expanded its development team with two new hires to support growth.

As part of the dev team, the two new hires, Kevin Lord and Maya Sunley, will work on the software products managed and sold by Summit (Feed Manager, CSS, Affiliate Manager, Product Maximiser), working with the sales team and clients to develop new systems, create new features, and fix bugs and issues which users raise.

Prior to joining Summit, Lord previously worked at Wren Kitchens as a 3D Developer.

In his new role, he hopes to be a part of wider scale projects with a bigger impact on important backend development decisions.

He said: “I hope to bring my experience working on complex large scalable projects to the team and I look forward to doing some frontend work as I would like to eventually gain more concrete full-stack development experience.”

Sunley also brings crucial experience to the role. Before her role at Summit, she worked as a software developer at Wexel Gaming.

She said: “I hope to bring my meticulous and logical nature to the dev team and the wider business, and I’m excited to gain more experience and understanding of the systems we maintain and improve.”

Martin Corcoran, CEO, added: “It’s a really exciting time at Summit and the expansion of the dev team is another important milestone for the business as all our offerings are continuing to expand.

“We hope to see the team grow even further throughout the year as we are always bringing on big projects and clients, including most recently Wickes and Silentnight.”