Gunnercooke expands with eight new recruits

Law firm gunnercooke has reached 50 partners, a significant milestone in the business’ development. The Firm has recently secured panel appointments from five FTSE 250 or equivalent businesses, and is fast becoming a challenger brand to much larger contemporaries, providing clients with senior, city quality lawyers, and certainty on fees.

The model continues to attract lawyers from leading national firms and senior in-house positions, and the latest recruits are undoubtedly another coup.

Ammar Al-Tabbaa joined gunnercooke as a Regulatory Partner having previously worked at McKinsey & Company, where he was the firm’s Public Sector Counsel for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

He previously worked at Simmons & Simmons where he specialised in regulated public and utilities procurement.

Vincent Coppinger joined as a commercial litigation and regulatory partner with extensive experience dealing with aviation liability insurance work, direct aviation litigation, ICC arbitration matters and aviation regulatory work for airlines and other aspects of leisure industry work. Vincent previously held partner positions at Stephenson Harwood and DLA Piper.

Laurence Katz joined the firm as a litigation partner having been a partner at Paisner & Co, Holman Fenwick Willan and most recently CKFT. Laurence specialises in fraud and asset tracing claims, insolvency and commercial disputes.

He is named in Who’s Who Legal as a specialist in Asset Recovery, and the Chambers 2014 guide describes him as a ‘hands-on’ practitioner and ‘good tactician’ with a ‘calm and measured approach’ and ‘excellent’ attention to detail.“

Francess Deigh joined as a corporate and commercial partner, with over 15 years of experience across a range of business sectors. Francess has worked for FTSE 100 Companies and international key players in the Mining, Energy, Oil & Gas Sectors and Telecommunication sector following qualification as a non-practising Barrister, and is lauded for her in-house counsel expertise.

Hannah Beko became a partner within the Real Estate team. She trained at Beachcrofts and worked for Eversheds in Manchester before joining gunnercooke. In the last year Hannah has worked in house for Derbyshire County Council managing their property department and providing legal advice for their extra care project.

Rob Fawke joined as a banking partner having previously been a partner and head of the Corporate Banking team at Pannone LLP. Rob is a highly rated banking lawyer, with an excellent reputation and proven track record of acting for financial institutions and corporate borrowers on a wide range of complex finance transactions.

Steve Esmond joined as an employment partner. Steve joins from Nabarro having gained most of his experience at national firms including Hammonds and Shoosmiths.

Steve has also been a Partner at Simpson Miller LLP and Ison Harrison in Leeds. He advises PLCs, private companies and owner managed businesses of all sizes on the full range of contentious and non-contentious employment issues.

James Nichols joined as an insolvency and restructuring partner, having previously run his own specialist insolvency and restructuring practice for 6 years, in addition to 24 years experience as a partner at a national law firm. Before joining the legal profession, James spent eight years working in the insolvency industry at KPMG and BDO Stoy Hayward

Speaking on the new recruits, founding partner Sarah Goulbourne said: “gunnercooke is a really exciting place to be right now, and we are delighted to welcome our new partners. They are all experts in their practice areas, which will continue to strengthen both our offering to clients and our brand.

“In the past few months, gunnercooke has secured some significant panel appointments, and this is undoubtedly owing to the quality of our growing partner group, and the way in which our model provides value to clients.

“Fifty partners was a big milestone for us to reach, and it’s really inspired us to look ahead.”

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