Early Benefits Of Merger Seen As Chief Executive Says Integration To Be Accelerated

The Group Chief Executive of Irwin Mitchell says the latest stage in the Group’s integration with Thomas Eggar heralds the next step in the development of the business – and said the early benefits of the merger announced just six months ago were already being seen.

Andrew Tucker was speaking as the five Thomas Eggar offices in the south east of England were today fitted with their new Irwin Mitchell signs ahead of adopting the Irwin Mitchell brand from May 31st.

The firms announced merger plans last year creating a £250m law firm ranked 11th in the UK with about 300 partners based in 14 locations across the country, expanding its private client and business legal services considerably. The merger increased the firm’s presence in London and the south east and half of the Group’s revenue now comes from clients in the southern half of the UK.

As new signs begin going up at offices in Gatwick, Chichester, the City, Newbury and Southampton, Andrew Tucker said a decision had been taken to invest in fast-tracking the integration to deliver the expected benefits from the merger.

He added that these included cross-selling opportunities and chances for the newly combined businesses’ experts to team up and offer greater depth of services to clients and there were already significant early signs of the benefit the merger would bring to the Group.

“Bringing our brands together has made us stronger and created a diverse business that will enable us to offer both private and business clients an unrivalled breadth of services.

“We have always said this merger would be transformational for our Group and adopting the Irwin Mitchell brand across the five former Thomas Eggar offices is the next part of this. There is considerable excitement among our people about the opportunity we have created and we’ve already seen some very encouraging examples of how the merger will benefit all areas of our business.

“We have therefore decided to push ahead with the integration as quickly as possible, making the necessary investments to support this, to enable teams from both businesses to come together as one Group as quickly as possible.”

He also confirmed that several former Thomas Eggar partners have taken senior roles in the firm. Vicky Brackett, former managing partner, has joined the Irwin Mitchell LLP Executive Board and will lead the commercial litigation team. Ursula Danagher will lead the private wealth team in the South-East and Stuart Padgham will lead the commercial and IT team.

The latest news from the Group comes just weeks after it announced the launch of Irwin Mitchell Private Wealth. It combined the expertise of four specialist private wealth teams from Berkeley Law, Berkeley Hurrell, Thomas Eggar, and Irwin Mitchell to create a private wealth business with significant breadth and depth across the UK.

Before the merger with Thomas Eggar, Irwin Mitchell had completed seven M&A deals since being granted an ABS licence in 2012. The last was the acquisition of private wealth firm Berkeley law in 2014.