DWF completes purchase of national firm following administration woes
National law firm DWF has completed its rescue purchase of Cobbetts, saving more than 400 jobs and promising to honour all training contracts.
Cobbetts appointed KPMG as administrator last week, after suffering poorer-than-expected trading in November and December last year. The former firm had 491 lawyers and support staff, of which 72 were partners, based in offices in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and London. Its workforce is due to move to DWF offices in the next few weeks.
However, the move does not include former partner Andrew Bennett and his finance litigation team, due to potential commercial conflicts following DWF’s recent merger with Fishburns. Bennett’s team will join Leeds firm Walker Morris.
Nor does the move include Cobbett’s specialist debt-recovery division, Incasso.
Richard Tromans, consultant at Jomati, says: “Cobbetts underwent remarkable expansion in the mid-noughties.
“This was wonderful when the market was growing but then real estate tanked, the public sector underwent severe cuts, and deals and transactional work dropped off. A firm that underwent steroid-like growth was left with all those offices and people to pay for when the market collapsed. It did too much too quickly and, despite doing as much as they could to get back on an even keel, was not able to sustain itself when the market was down.
“Often in these situations, partners start to walk out and this creates a ‘run on the partnership’—it is commendable that this didn’t happen at Cobbetts.
“When the economic crisis began, mid-tier and regional firms thought they would not do too badly because they would be seen as a cost-effective alternative to the City firms. In fact, the City firms effectively dropped their rates to keep their clients.”
Andrew Leaitherland, managing partner and CEO of DWF, says: “Both firms agreed that this was the best route forward and so the process was a smooth one. This is the latest milestone in what is already proving to be a positive year for DWF and one that continues along our clearly defined plan of strategic growth.”
DWF and Cobbetts were in failed merger talks a year ago.
Rapidly expanding firm DWF has nearly 2,500 lawyers and support staff in 13 offices across the UK. It also merged with Scottish firm Biggart Baillie last year.
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