Bevan Ashford’s outgoing chief executive, Nick Jarrett-Kerr, has pledged to integrate the firm’s two profit centres, despite signs of internal resistance to forging a unified management and part-nership.
Speaking in the week that the firm appointed a non-legal chief executive, Ann Conway-Hughes, director of strategy capability at GKN, Jarrett-Kerr conceded that plans to merge the two sides of the Southwest firm would take longer than expected.
“We had said that we could get it done during financial year 2002-03,” he said, “but it is a big job and could take longer than that.”
