Alternative business structures

An innovative Hereford-based alternative business structure has set up a joint venture with a Welsh accountancy firm, joining nine other branded businesses in the Kidwell Group, ranging from a barristers’ chambers to a guest house.

The listed company that owns NewLaw Solicitors is to acquire a fleet accident management group that itself has a joint venture alternative business structure with NewLaw. Redde has agreed to acquire the FMG group of companies for approximately £43.2m.

Fairpoint plc’s acquisition of Colemans-ctts has formally completed, meaning legal services now accounts for 62% of the company’s revenue. The deal, first announced at the start of the month, is structured as an acquisition by Simpson Millar, the law firm Fairpoint bought last year to enter the legal market.

The number of potential shareholder claims against Quindell plc has hit 850 in the wake of last week’s “breathtaking” financial restatements, it has emerged. The number of potential claimants had been “increasingly fairly steadily”, but “there was a surge over the last week or so”.

A boutique firm of external in-house counsel has launched an alternative business structure in order to expand and strengthen its non-lawyer management. London-headquartered Cleveland & Co received its ABS licence from the Solicitors Regulation Authority, effective from 1 August.

Personal injury specialist Minster Law has signed an exclusive two-year contract with national chambers Clerksroom and Parklane Plowden, to provide barristers for its fast and multi-track cases. Stephen Ward, chief executive of Clerksroom, said he hoped similar contracts would follow.

A global legal outsourcing brand has launched an alternative business structure to add legal services to its motor claims business. WNS, based in Mumbai, has delivery centres across the world.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB), which predicted at one point last year that it would authorise 400 firms in 2015, has authorised only 32 in its first four months as an entity regulator, it has emerged. Meanwhile it may not be regulating alternative business structures until later next year.

Local authority legal departments are being forced to set up alternative business structures by restrictive rules on in-house lawyers, leading to the “privatisation” of public sector legal services, the director of Essex Legal Services has claimed.

Peninsula Business Services, one of the largest unregulated providers of legal services in the country, has blamed Solicitors Regulation Authority rules for scuppering its plans to set up an alternative business structure. The company provides employment law, HR and health and safety advice to over 30,000 small businesses in the UK.

Kent County Council, which tendered for a joint venture partner to set up alternative business structure last autumn, has narrowed the list of potential candidates to one, it has emerged. The bidder will make a presentation to Kent’s commissioning advisory board in early September.

A former high-flying banker, who worked at Lehman Brothers before the crash, has told Legal Futures how he developed a plan to set up a pioneering alternative business structure while travelling in Vietnam. Zahid Hussein said he wants Z Group to be an integrated one-stop shop for SMEs.

Legal regulators have called on the government to make a series of changes to the Legal Services Act that will make it easier to approve and regulate alternative business structures. The move is part of the first output from joint work being done by all of the legal regulators to identify opportunities for deregulation.

The number of accountancy firms authorised or licensed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) to provide probate services has passed 100. The ICAEW has predicted that it will reach 200 by the end of the year.

In its first trading statement since listing on AIM last month, national law firm Gateley said that it expects its 2014/15 revenue to rise 10% on the previous 12 months. Meanwhile, the listing “shows a new way forward in opening up the market through flexible regulatory practice”, the SRA said yesterday.