DLA Piper has suffered further regional losses as Birmingham managing partner Mark Beardmore and head of technology and sourcing Simon Jones depart for Eversheds.
Corporate M&A and private equity partner Beardmore, who regularly acts for private equity funders and management teams on management buyouts and secondary buyouts, is thought to have been approached by Eversheds and resigned from DLA last week.
Jones, who will take up the role of IT outsourcing partner in the TMT sector group in Eversheds’ Leeds office after leaving DLA in October, advises on the negotiation of complex IT outsourcing and systems integration projects for private and public sector clients.
The moves follow the news in July that the Global 100 leader had lost corporate restructuring and recovery lawyer John Vickery, who in 2008 led a DLA team on the administration of Virgin Megastores spinoff Zavvi, to Irwin Mitchell’s Manchester office.
Vickery’s move followed Irwin Mitchell’s hire of a four-partner real estate team from DLA’s Manchester office, including real estate chief Anita Weightman, former office managing partner Roy Beckett and property partners Patrick Duffy and Tony Weightman, who assumed their role on 1 February along with a team of 10.
Other losses include Manchester technology partner Stuart Campbell, who launched Bristol-based firm TLT’s Manchester office this summer.
DLA has suffered a period of internal upheaval after launching a redundancy consultation at the end of November. Two hundred and fifty one lawyers and back office staff were affected following a review of its UK business, which led to the divestment of its 50-strong defendant insurance practice, with Hill Dickinson taking on the teams in Sheffield and Manchester in January this year.
Its decision to close its Glasgow base also led to 67 departures from the firm, after only eight employees chose to relocate to Edinburgh.
francesca.fanshawe@legalease.co.uk