A popular long-term board member with the social skills needed to pull together a newly-merged transcontinental firm, Ashurst’s October announcement that dispute resolution partner Ben Tidswell has been elected chairman, is nonetheless a shock defeat for incumbent firm head Charlie Geffen.
In a simple ‘one partner, one vote’ election, the emergence of Ashurst Australia’s competition and consumer protection partner Peter Armitage as a contender for the top job had turned the election into a three-horse race.
However, Geffen, whose current senior partner title was subsumed by the new chairman role after newly-merged Ashurst Australia revised its corporate strategy in July, was widely expected to be re-elected.
Instead, lesser-known Tidswell took over the five-year term on 1 November, as the top 20 firm beds down its merger with leading Australian outfit Blake Dawson.
Many of the largest stumbling blocks to the merger have notably already been overcome, with the firm in September announcing its full financial integration, including a single profit pool, unified partnership compensation system and single governance system.
Tidswell now assumes the challenge of unifying Ashurst after an unsettling merger and a change of leadership that has sent reverberations through the firm.
The commercial disputes lawyer, who has been a board member since 2007, having joined Ashurst in 1993 and become a partner in the London-based dispute resolution team in 2003, acknowledges that the challenge going forward will be integration on a personal level. He told Legal Business: ‘A lot has been done over the past two years but now the challenge is making the business work and it’s about getting the partners thinking together.’
‘That would be completely wrong,’ says Tidswell, adding, ‘I have spoken to an enormous amount of partners and the mood is one of excitement. The merger went through with a very large majority and at no point at all was that message coming through.
‘This is not a backwards election, what we have done is really ground breaking and in all the discussions and healthy debates it’s not about history. Even if it had been, on the board I have been completely beside Charlie on the merger.’
However, one ex-partner comments: ‘There was a big “them and us” [mentality] at Ashurst. Charlie was very divisive, there would have been a lot of protest votes against him but Ben is a strong candidate and has lots of positives. A number of people would have voted for him anyway.’
Tidswell’s election was followed shortly after by the announcement that Ashurst Australia’s chair Mary Padbury would take the post of vice chair, following an election which was only open to Ashurst Australia.
The remaining board elections will follow, in which four legacy Ashurst partners, three legacy Blake Dawson partners and an Asia partner will be chosen to assist in the firm’s management alongside the chairman, vice-chairman, chief financial officer, two independent members and global managing partner James Collis.
Collis commented: ‘Ben has considerable leadership skills. As a board member of Ashurst for the last six years, and chair of the new partners committee prior to that, he has made a significant contribution to the firm and its strategy. He will make an exceptional chair and help us drive our ambition to become a global elite law firm.’