Press Release

Leading north-west personal injury law firm Antony Hodari has continued its diversification strategy by completing the purchase of litigation specialist Tandem Law, via its AVH Legal LLP trading arm. AVH Legal LLP will operate the newly acquired firm under the trading name Tandem Law. The acquisition was agreed with the administrators for the business and the current management team. As part of the deal, all 45 staff and management will be retained.

Tandem Law, which has offices in Preston and Manchester, was established in 2011 and since then has grown rapidly. It now has around 18,000 live cases, including:

• Human rights/reparation cases involving former Kenyan Mau Mau activists making claims against the British Government over its brutal detention regime in the 1950s;
• Professional negligence cases involving right-to-buy mortgages;
• Claims resulting from the 2011 Sonae factory fire in Kirkby that lasted for eight days; and
• Medical negligence, healthcare and other professional negligence-type cases.

The deal follows the recent pre-pack acquisition of Preston firm Ashton Fox, which had a workload of around 8,000 predominantly mortgage mis-selling and right-to-buy cases. Last year Antony Hodari also bought well-known Liverpool personal injury firm Paul Rooney.

Tandem Managing Director Andrew Lindsey and Head of Marketing and Development Xavi Rodriguez will join the group as, respectively, Legal Technical Director and Operations Director for AVH Legal. They will have leadership responsibilities for AVH Legal, which will merge the Tandem and the Ashton Fox operational entities.

Antony Hodari CEO Mark Grover says: “While our commitment to personal injury remains undimmed, this acquisition continues our strategy of sensible diversification. The hard work of recent years reshaping Antony Hodari is paying off as we have a lean and efficient business that can act quickly when opportunities such as this present themselves. I do not expect this to be the last deal we do.

“Tandem Law has very healthy pipeline of quality cases. It has fast established itself as the go-to firm for a range of specialist claims and we are confident that together we can continue to grow the practice.”