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Reshuffles: Norton Rose Fulbright finalises restructure as it reviews practice areas

Norton Rose Fulbright has carried out a reshuffle of its management positions including creating a new global business head and scrapping its deputy managing partner role as it moves forward with plans to revamp its tax practice’s and smaller departments’ strategies.

Deputy managing partner Tim Marsden’s role was dropped during the re-election process of chief executive Peter Martyr in November, with Martin Scott now taking on management responsibility for EMEA as managing partner of Norton Rose Fulbright LLP. Despite losing the role, Marsden will keep his seat on both the global and EMEA executive boards and will now look at developing the firm’s 65-partner tax practice and other smaller departments, aiming to improve their co-ordination.

Marsden will focus on smaller departments across the firm to see how they can be ‘threaded better together and how to go to market with them’, said Norton Rose Fulbright’s chief executive Peter Martyr (pictured).

Martyr added: ‘In the past we looked at tax as being a support function for corporate and banking – instead we thought, we have this big resource, let’s look at this and get someone with an experienced eye to see if we can find something interesting and innovative instead of it being an asset advisory function. We want to have a global tax structure.’

Meanwhile, Ava Yaskiel has stepped up into Martin Scott’s previous position as global head of corporate while Raj Karia has become the firm’s head of corporate for EMEA.

Other appointments include Martin McCann to the executive board and as global head of business with a remit to review potential areas of improvement while Denver-based partner-in-charge Gene Lewis also made it onto the board. Martyr said: ‘Lawyers are traditionally conservative so Martin will look at initiatives on how to build business acumen throughout the partnership.’

Singapore-based partner Nick Merritt will succeed McCann as head of infrastructure, mining and commodities.

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk