“I had to Google it,” Julian Clark said. “I’m as shocked as you. I am in mourning.”
The veteran shipping lawyer got word this week only through concerned calls and messages from friends that the stock-listed Ince Group with its fabled shipping law practice would file court papers to be placed under administration.
TradeWinds reported this week that the London-listed Ince Group had announced the plans after its bankers lost patience and pulled the plug. That followed the last in a series of failures to present its audited books for the year ending 31 March 2022. The Ince Group’s share had been suspended from trading since January.
Shipping remained the core of the Ince Group’s legal practice even after its 2018 merger with stock-listed Gordon Dadds to form Ince Gordon Dadds.
But the shipping practice had problems under new corporate owners whose mission to expand ran afoul of internal dissent, rising costs, and not least a massive internet security crisis in March 2022 when Ince refused to pay a ransomware demand by hackers, and was forced to rebuild its IT system from the ground up, according to some sources.
Clark was let go as senior partner at the troubled Ince Group after it eliminated his position in February, and has been on gardening leave since, with no direct insight into group activities, he told TradeWinds.
TradeWinds has previously reported on Clark’s next move, which will be to Norwegian mutual insurer Gard.
As a veteran of Clifford Chance and HFW, and a founder of Campbell Johnston Clark (CJC), he served as global head of shipping at Hill Dickinson until 2019, when the freshly merged Ince Gordon Dadds recruited him as global shipping partner in 2019.
Despite having been cut loose after three years of trying to save Ince’s shipping practice, Clark took no joy in the troubles of his former employer and remained frankly upset about the Ince collapse a day after it became known.
“This is the loss of one of the great institutions in shipping,” he said, pointing to a history that dates to 1866. Ince had already been around for decades when it represented the hull insurer of the Titanic, and in modern times it was long the lawyer of choice for Greek owners from Onassis to Economou.
Defections of top legal talent to other firms have been a regular feature of Ince coverage stretching back years before Clark’s own departure in April at the end of his three-year contract, including those of global head of admiralty Christian Dwyer and senior partner James Drummond to Oslo-based Schjodt.
contract ends in April and will not be renewed
Several former Ince lawyers have told TradeWinds that not all the turmoil can be blamed on the Gordon Dadds merger, and Clark agreed.
“It’s true there were inherited problems,” he said. “They acquired something far too big for them to handle.”
But Clark underscored that the shipping practice under him had managed to recruit top talent to renew and develop the firm, both at the partner level and otherwise.
He mentioned in particular partners Eric Eyo and Peter McNamee, formerly of CJC, as well as senior associate Akshay Misra.
“And Ince’s new trainees are among the most impressive I’ve ever seen,” he said.
