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Office: +44 (0)20 7248 1045 Tony Williams has more than thirty 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 Consultants, Tony has worked for a range of international and domestic firms in the UK, US and Continental Europe, Asia and Australia. His advice covers such matters as management succession, partner appraisal and remuneration, peer reviews, firm strategy and its implementation including business planning and the positioning of law firms in their market. He is also actively involved in firms’ strategic expansion including mergers, new offices, alliances and team hires. He also assists firms on reorganisations, profitability analysis and client strategies. Before founding Jomati Consultants Tony was worldwide managing partner of Andersen Legal and head of its UK practice. He developed the international strategy for Andersen Legal, which in 2001 was the ninth largest global law firm in fee income. Following the Enron crisis he managed the dissolution of Andersen Legal and of the English law firm Garretts. For his role in the orderly and controlled dissolution of Garretts he was named “Partner of the Year” by The Lawyer Magazine in 2002. Prior to joining Andersen Legal, Tony was managing partner of the world’s largest law firm, Clifford Chance. He was with Clifford Chance almost 20 years and prior to his managing partner role he was a corporate partner in London, Hong Kong and the managing partner of the firm’s Moscow office. Tony is also an independent member of The Standards Committee of The Corporation of London. |
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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. Michael is currently the interim general counsel of Smiths Industries Plc and therefore although he remains a consultant to Jomati Consultants he does so in an advisory capacity and is not currently available for client engagements. 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 EMEA region and was the sole transactional lawyer. He practised 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 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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Richard Tromans Office: +44 (0)20 7248 1045 Richard has over ten years’ experience researching and writing about the legal sector. Most recently he worked as Report Editor at Hildebrandt management consultants in London, writing reports and white papers on legal markets and strategic issues facing law firms. At Hildebrandt he also undertook projects for clients to assess markets, potential hires and merger candidates. Richard has particularly strong interview and investigatory skills. Prior to moving into consulting he wrote extensively on the legal sectors in the UK, US, Europe and Asia, holding senior positions at a number of legal publications. For two and a half years he was based in Paris where he developed a valuable perspective on the French and wider European legal market. |
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Tony Williams
Michael Herlihy
Benita Kumar