Maritime firm drops anchor with Stephenson Harwood

MERGER: 100-partner firm boosts shipping, asset finance work

City firm Stephenson Harwood (SH) has announced its long-awaited merger with shipping specialists Sinclair Roche & Temperley to create a 100-partner firm with a 70 million turnover.

The merger is in effect a takeover, as the new practice will trade under the SH name, while SH's existing management team of senior partner Andrew Sutch and chief executive John Pike will continue in their roles.

Sinclair Roche's managing partner, Jeff Morgan, will serve on the partnership council for a year to assist on integration issues.

Otherwise, Sinclair Roche partners will only get onto the council through the usual partnership-wide elections.

The firms said the reasons behind the merger were threefold: to increase market presence, to deliver economies of scale, and to strengthen SH's recent refocus on international financial markets.

In particular, Mr Pike said the merger would help extend its asset finance practice across a wider range of assets, such as aeroplanes, energy and, in time, trains.

Mr Pike said the merger had hit two of SH's four target markets - shipping and international finance - the others being real estate and growth businesses.

He indicated that the firm would pursue other mergers to bulk up in these areas.

'I'm just looking forward to the next one,' he said.

In the short term, SH is hoping to tie up a formal merger with its associated French firm, Barb Carpentier Thibault Groener.

Victoria MacCallum