The latest instalment of Ashurst’s senior management elections has seen Ashurst Australia’s chair Mary Padbury voted in as vice chair of the newly-merged firm just days after partners said no to incumbent head Charlie Geffen for the chair role in favour of Ben Tidswell.

Padbury, who was widely-tipped for the vice chair post, held a number of management roles at legacy Australia Big Six firm Blake Dawson, which formally merged with Ashurst in September, including as the firm’s resident London partner from 2001 to 2003 and as an executive partner with responsibility for the firm’s national corporate, competition and intellectual property practices from 2003 to 2005.
Continue reading “Ashurst leadership contest – Mary Padbury for vice chairman”

A popular long term board member with the social skills needed to pull together a newly-merged transcontinental firm, Ashurst’s announcement today (16 October) that outside runner, dispute resolution partner Ben Tidswell has been elected as chairman, is nonetheless a shock defeat for incumbent firm head Charlie Geffen.

After a simple ‘one partner, one vote’ election, the emergence of Ashurst Australia’s competition and consumer protection partner Peter Armitage as a contender for the top job had turned the election into a three horse race.

However, Geffen, whose current senior partner title was subsumed by the new chairman role after newly-merged Ashurst Australia revised its corporate strategy in July, was widely expected to be re-elected. Continue reading “Ashurst says no to Geffen for chairman in surprise election result”