Partners escape as Halliwells finally expires
23 July 2010
After years of struggling against the inevitable, Halliwells has finally collapsed. An administrator from BDO was appointed on Tuesday, swiftly making 42 redundancies at a meeting that evening with more, inevitably, to follow. And 45 prospective trainees saw their immediate career prospects go up in smoke.

Thirty seven of the redundancies were central services support staff - that's despite insiders telling RollOnFriday that a Halliwells employment partner had emailed them the week before to say they would be fine until at least September. However the partners have been rushing to secure new homes, with Hill Dickinson, Pinsent Masons, HBJ Gateley Wareing and Barlow Lyde & Gilbert happily picking over the pieces.

Succesful escapees include litigator Julian Diaz Rainey, who has landed a place on the letterhead of Hill Dickinson. His experience of sending letters before action to RollOnFriday threatening injunctions and the wrath of expensive QCs whenever it was suggested that the firm might be in, err, financial difficulty will no doubt stand him in good stead.

Halliwells yesterday

But will it be a case of the partners who were behind the firm's demise walking away scot free into other jobs? Well, possibly not. The administrator told a Halliwells staff meeting on Tuesday that the firm owed its bank £22 million and that the bank was, technically, "very pissed off". He added that he'd be looking very closely at partner expenses and at the acquisition of the firm's Manchester offices, when equity partners pocketed a load of cash in exchange for extortionate future rent.

Watch this space.