THE chief executive of Mourant will be standing down after the sell-off of two of the group’s divisions.
Nicola Davies has worked for the firm for 20 years, initially as a lawyer practising corporate and financial law. She was made a partner in 1995, deputy managing partner in 2002, and chief executive of a new corporate structure, Mourant Ltd, in 2003. Since then she has overseen further expansion of the group into new jurisdictions, including New York, San Francisco, Dubai, and Cayman.
As reported earlier, Mourant Private Wealth, the group’s trust division — headed by Anthony Cooke-Yarborough — has been sold to Royal Bank of Canada for an undisclosed sum. In addition the funds division, Mourant International Finance Administration, under chief executive Ian Lambert, is in the final stages of a management buy-out, backed by a private equity deal expected to conclude early this year. This division employs a total of 700 staff across the group.
Asked for the reason behind the sale, Ms Davies (pictured) said that the two divisions had grown beyond the level of a privately owned Jersey-based business and that the decision to sell had been made early in 2008. ‘Both businesses had ambitious growth plans. Opportunities came up which made absolute sense, but they were beyond the capability of the group to keep pace with. We spent some time looking at the market and ended up with two different routes. The two divisions are very different businesses — one is a business-to-business environment with a large footprint; the other provides services directly to the client.’
