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Office: +44 (0)20 7248 1045 Tony Williams has more than twenty five years experience in the legal profession, occupying senior management positions as well as direct client handling and fee earning. He is admitted as a solicitor in England & Wales, Hong Kong and Victoria, Australia. In Jomati Tony does not practise as a lawyer. As principal of Jomati, Tony has worked for a range of international and domestic firms in the UK, US, Continental Europe, Asia and Australia. He also writes and speaks extensively on a range of legal strategic and management issues. Before founding Jomati Tony was worldwide managing partner of Andersen Legal and head of its UK practice. He developed the international strategy for Andersen Legal including leading projects for the development in the US and UK, material expansion into other 'core' countries, rationalisation of other operations, practice integration, creation of regional practice groups and industry-sector groups. Prior to joining Andersen Legal Tony was managing partner of the world's largest law firm, Clifford Chance. As managing partner, Tony instigated a major strategic review of the firm’s international operations which culminated in the mergers with Rogers and Wells in New York and Punder in Germany. As managing partner he undertook substantial re-organisation of the firm to enable practice groups to lead at a global level and be accountable for their development. He also led a review of partner appraisal, payment and capital position which resulted in substantial beneficial changes. |
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Office: +44 (0)20 7248 1045 Michael Herlihy has spent over 25 years as a senior in house adviser – the last 10 as general counsel to ICI, the international chemicals group. During this time he worked alongside some of the leading UK and US advisers and gained a first hand understanding of what makes these relationships work and how lawyers and law firms can position themselves distinctively in the eyes of senior business clients. Having been responsible for spending in excess of a quarter of a billion pounds on legal and other professional services, and having worked not only as general counsel but in a variety of other senior roles, including executive vice president mergers & acquisitions and group taxation controller. As general counsel, Michael worked through a turbulent period in which ICI underwent a major strategic transformation involving well over 100 separate acquisitions and disposals (with a cumulative value of over £13 billion) whilst also grappling with major product liability, anti trust and securities litigation. Over the course of his career Michael has built legal departments from scratch; grown them; downsized and re-structured them and, having led ICI’s award winning in house legal department, he understands the essentials required to ensure that these expensive resources add real value to the business. At ICI he also built close and successful relationships with half a dozen different chairmen and chief executives, giving him an in depth understanding of what it takes to build credibility with the top table and operate effectively in the boardroom. Prior to his appointment as general counsel in 1996, Michael worked as a senior member of ICI’s finance department where he led the tax planning and international revenue negotiations which facilitated the 1993 demerger of Zeneca – then the largest demerger of a UK company.. |
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John Holmes Office: +44 (0)20 7248 1045 John has over 25 years' experience, both as a practising solicitor and in management roles at Clifford Chance. Most recently, he was managing partner of Clifford Chance in the Middle East where he was responsible for the development and implementation of strategy, and the management of the firm's offices and strategic associations. He combined this role with client handling, being one of the key proponents of the firm's client focus initiative, and active fee earning on major corporate and finance transactions. Prior to this he was the managing partner of the firm's Moscow office, during which time he assisted with the implementation of the merger with Punder in Russia at the time of the firm's triple merger on Jan 1 2000. Previous experience includes seven years in Hong Kong managing the corporate and financial markets practice and two years in Bahrain. John also spent two years on secondment to a major multinational company in their European head office in Lausanne, where he was responsible for setting up the legal department for the newly created EEMA region and was the sole transactional lawyer. He practiced in the London market for over six years where he specialised in a range of corporate and finance transactions |
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Office: +44 (0)20 7248 1045 John has 38 years’ experience with Barclays Bank. He has 17 years experience working with the professionals sector and joined at the establishment of Barclays Professional Services Team acting for lawyers, accountants, consultants and property professionals. John has been actively involved in developments affecting professional service firms having worked on working parties examining UK limited liability partnership law, a statement of recommended practice on the accounting of UK LLPs and the UK Law Commission proposals for the reform of partnership law. He is an active member of the UK based Association of Partnership Practitioners and speaks and writes extensively on partnership financing matters. In 2003, John relocated to New York to establish and lead a Barclays team advising professional service firms in the US. He returned from the US in Autumn 2006. John advises a range of law firms on their financial strategies including their capital requirements, debt funding, the investment of client and firm funds, treasury management and pooling, netting and currency hedging and transactional banking. He also advises law firms on their banking documentation, in particular the application and bank selection process, information requirements, banking covenants and events of default. John is an associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers. |
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Office: +44 (0)20 7248 1045 Benita has over ten years experience as an in-house legal advisor to the financial services industry. From 2000 to 2006 she was Head of Legal at Henderson Global Investors, one of the UK’s leading investment management companies. In that role she was responsible for the legal function relating to its full range of corporate and fund management matters including M&A, joint ventures, strategic alliances and litigation as well as institutional and retail structured, private equity and hedge fund products. She was also actively involved in the structuring and development of new funds and products both in the UK and internationally. At Henderson she developed the legal group, based in the UK and the US, into a very high calibre team of ten lawyers plus company secretarial and support staff, servicing the company’s UK, European, US, and Asian operations. She was also responsible for global law firm selection and relationship development including the establishment of legal panels and management of the legal budget. |
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Tony Williams
Michael Herlihy
John Robinson
Benita Kumar