A 40-strong team has broken away from RBG Legal Services to relaunch Rosenblatt as an independent firm, as its listed parent company RBG Holding Group – which also owns City law firm Memery Crystal – prepares for administration.
The group relaunching Rosenblatt, led by name partner Ian Rosenblatt, has also recruited former RPC managing partner Jonathan Watmough, who is returning to law firm management after an eight-year hiatus with a new role as chair of the City disputes firm.
The news is the latest development in a dramatic series of events which has seen the unravelling of the ambitious 2021 combination of Rosenblatt and Memery Crystal under the AIM-listed parent RBG.
Rosenblatt’s relaunch as an independent firm came hours before RBG Holding Group today announced its intention to appoint administrators, with notices to appoint administrators to RBG Legal Services Limited and RBL Law Limited also filed.
Both announcements came days after a stock market statement on 28 January confirmed that RBG Holdings was suspending share trading after discussions around a potential solvent sale of the non-Rosenblatt-branded business ended.
The 40-person Rosenblatt team will be led by new chair Watmough, who previously served as managing partner at RPC for a decade between 2006 and 2016, and chief executive Adil Taha, who has experience in investment banking, corporate c-suites, and working with various private equity buyers of UK professional services firms, according to his LinkedIn.
Since leaving RPC in 2016, Watmough has acted as chief executive officer at tech company Quintillion Team Technologies, and founded his own management consultancy, as well well as writing a book, How To Thrive In A Commercial Law Firm.
Rosenblatt partners Tania MacLeod and Anthony Field have also been appointed to Rosenblatt’s new board as head of dispute resolution and partner respectively.
Announcing the news, Rosenblatt founder and senior partner Ian Rosenblatt said: ‘I founded Rosenblatt in 1989 – it has been my life’s work. Today my firm regained its independence – the same name, the same team, and the same drive but without the previous distractions of being owned as a listed company.’
Recent weeks have seen an extended period of public wrangling between RBG and Ian Rosenblatt. RBG announced on 8 January that it had terminated its consultancy agreement with Rosenblatt for ‘breaches of the Consultancy Agreement, breaches of Restrictive Covenants given by Ian Rosenblatt, and offensive behaviour unbecoming of a solicitor and consultant to RBG Holdings plc.’
Legal Cheek reported that Rosenblatt subsequently described RBG’s accusations as ‘substantially untrue and defamatory’.
He continued: ‘Despite the protestations to the contrary of a number of individual members of the board, the company and its trading subsidiary RBG Legal Services is (and has been for a considerable period of time) insolvent.’
When the London Stock Exchange suspended trading in RBG shares on Tuesday (28 January) the closing price stood at 0.89p per share, down from 2.7p at the start of the year. The company first listed in May 2018 at 131p per share, and hit an all-time high of 160p per share on 2 July 2021.
Teams of lawyers are already beginning to leave Memery Crystal, which was acquired by RBG in April 2021. London firm Lawrence Stephens today announced the hire of a five-partner real estate team comprising John Aynsley, Chris Cagney, Matthew Hind, Nickhil Mandora, and Sam Silverman, while commercial, IP, and technology head Carl Rohsler has announced a move to Keystone Law with three other lawyers.
According to Memery Crystal’s website, around 60 other lawyers remain at the firm, including around 20 partners. These include chair and senior corporate partner Lesley Gregory and senior partner Nick Davis, Legal 500 Hall of Famers for equity capital markets – small-mid cap.