Gordon Dadds and Ince & Co have confirmed that they will merge to become Who's Ince's Daddy? Ince Gordon Dadds.
The new combined business, planned to launch by the end of the year, will become the largest UK listed law firm with revenue of over £114 million. The announcement was accompanied by a kazoo rather than a golden fanfare, as only a handful of UK law firms are actually listed.
Gordon Dadds' managing partner Adrian Giles said that he "will be delighted to welcome our new colleagues to the group". He commented that "Ince is a highly successful and well-respected business" (OK, let's allow that), adding that the shipping firm is "an iconic brand" (that's going too far).
Peter Rogan, Ince's Chairman, also felt the love saying "This is an exciting day for us at Ince, with this cutting-edge deal being very much in line with our long-established strategy" (of being taken over?).
Taking the shine off the tie-up, Gordon Dadds has had to field questions about Lord Hain being an adviser to the firm. Last week, Hain used parliamentary privilege to break a court injunction as he named Philip Green as the businessman facing sexual harassment allegations. It has since emerged that Gordon Dadds was instructed by The Daily Telegraph regarding the injunction case.
A spokeswoman for Gordon Dadds told RollOnFriday that the firm had not "in any way acted improperly". She added that Hain "did not obtain any information from Gordon Dadds" regarding the injunction, nor had he had any "involvement in the advice" to The Telegraph or "any sensitive information regarding this case.”
Hain also released a statement saying that his decision to name Green was in his "personal capacity as an independent member of the House Of Lords". And that he "was completely unaware Gordon Dadds were advising the Telegraph regarding this case". He stated that the firm "played absolutely no part whatsoever in either the sourcing of my information or my independent decision to name Sir Philip".
It remains to be seen whether Hain will use parliamentary privilege to claim that the entire board of Ince fiddles with farmyard animals and then claim that his relationship with Gordon Dadds was entirely coincidental.
Comments
That’s all very interesting but will GD now take over DWF who 4 months’ after the float fanfare have become indecently quiet?
Is a GD takeover DWF’s only hope of becoming a listed company?
Surely the city wizz kids looked at DWF’s numbers, their leveraging, their faultless plan to expand into far flung places and concluded “this baby’s gonna float then fly”?
Come on RoF get to the nub of the float story or was this all, to coin a phrase from the urban dictionary a “ghost poop” story?
Look it up.
After Mr Biles hands out his performance targets to all these new partners, they will probably feel like they’ve been fiddled with by farm animals.
I know some good donkey sanctuaries that would happily look after partners much in need of retirement after being appallingly overworked these last few years....
Sad little firm merges with obscure AIM-listed outfit. What could possibly go wrong?
"This is an exciting day for us at Ince, with this cutting-edge deal being very much in line with our long-established strategy" (of being taken over?)
FYI ROF, building up and selling out IS a well-established strategy.
But yes, agree that it would be interesting to probe further on exactly how "long-established" this strategy is at Ince. I wonder how widely this strategy was communicated and what moves were undertaken to implement .... 'strategically' working to reduce revenues over last few years??
What is the point of a law firm being listed? Genuine question, just wondering.
Gordon Dadds was taken over a couple of years ago by something called Work Group PLC, a shell company that had just got shot of its indebted and underperforming marketing business for a rock-bottom price (to Capita of all people).
Curious parties at Ince & Co may want to take a look at this Work Group mob – in particular, just how much cash they were paying themselves to run a publicly-listed company into the ground.
Is anyone left at Inces these days? Gordon Ladds are going to be taking over an empty husk.
Where has the "next article" button gone?!
Gordon who? What are Messrs Ince & Co up to?