THIS has been an exciting year for Howes Percival, as we re-launched one office and opened a brand new office in a new location. We also refreshed our brand.
We now have six offices, Cambridge, Leicester, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Northampton and Norwich and we operate across the heartland of the country.
We now have 40 partners, 259 staff and 152 fee-earners.
In February, we opened new offices in Milton Keynes, Knowlhill, building on our existing 30-year presence in the city by recruiting and relocating more staff to our new office.
THIS has been an exciting year for Howes Percival, as we re-launched one office and opened a brand new office in a new location. We also refreshed our brand.
We now have six offices, Cambridge, Leicester, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Northampton and Norwich and we operate across the heartland of the country.
We now have 40 partners, 259 staff and 152 fee-earners.
In February, we opened new offices in Milton Keynes, Knowlhill, building on our existing 30-year presence in the city by recruiting and relocating more staff to our new office. The move has been a great success and we have modernised the office with new furniture, with the help of our client office furniture manufacturer Frem.
That was followed in April when we entered the Cambridge legal services market for the first time with a new commercial property team of four people and new premises, with an initial focus on property and corporate work. The team is led by Jonathan Greenhalgh, previously head of real estate at Birketts in Cambridge. We were soon able to recruit a corporate partner, Adam Kudryl.
We continued the expansion in November with the acquisition of part of Taylor Vinters’ real estate business. Four partners, five associates and solicitors and four other members of staff joined us. The Cambridge office, in just 10 months, has 23 people working for the firm.
April also saw us start on building our new Norwich office premises, a brand new 15,000 sq ft development in the city’s historic Cathedral Close district which is the largest new office development in Norwich city centre for more than five years. The office is due to be finished in the Spring of 2016.
In May, we announced nine key promotions across the firm’s Norwich, Milton Keynes, Leicester and Manchester offices including four new partners. Daniel Banton, Stuart Burns, Joanna Nicholls and Amy Walpole made partner; Karyn Coburn and Justine Flack were promoted to the level of director; Katherine Brown, Katharine Danks and Jay Mehta have been promoted to associate level September saw the publication of the well-known legal directory the Legal 500. 18 different Howes Percival practice areas are recommended in the guide including Corporate and Commercial, Banking and Finance, Education, Commercial Property, Construction, Family, Charities, Contentious trusts and probate, Personal Injury and IT and Telecoms.
Thirteen Howes Percival lawyers are recognised by the legal directory as elite ‘leading individuals’ and 40 Howes Percival experts are recommended this year. September also saw us refresh our branding and logo.
For us in the Howes Percival Northampton office, 2015 has seen some significant transactional work.
We have acted on the sales of Hawes Signs, QMP and Jellyfish and for Gilt Edged and Chamberlain Plastics on acquisitions. We carried out a significant and complicated restructure of the British Racing Drivers Club and for our client Paragon Automotive, we negotiated a long-term contract for them to provide dedicated vehicle storage and inspection and refurbishment services to car manufacturer Kia at a new bespoke vehicle support facility based in Humberside. We have also been involved in advising on significant lending transactions for client banks Lloyds, Natwest, Handelsbanken and Santander.
Property has seen a substantial rise in high value instructions. We have acted for several regional property developers acquiring options over large tranches of land around Northamptonshire which is earmarked for future development. We have also acted for several regional and national developers in the estate set ups of in-progress residential developments. Bank work has included re-finances of large scale property portfolios for several clients. We are also acting for Handelsbanken on the financing of a significant development project in Northamptonshire.
As we complete a phenomenally successful 2015 and look to 2016, the pace of growth will not let up. 2016 will bring moves for our Norwich and Northampton offices. Within five years, all our offices will have moved into new, 21st Century office premises, providing staff and clients with a fantastic environment in which to do business.
We will look forward to welcoming you all and watch out for news of our moving to new state of the art offices in Northampton in 2016.