Wallace acts for Joyce Lorigan, one of PR Week’s Top 100, on the sale of her PR business to the Golley Slater Group
Wallace acted for Joyce Lorigan, the former head of corporate communications at Walt Disney and founder of Margaret Street Communications, on the sale of the Margaret Street business to national public relations firm, Golley Slater Group.
Margaret Street, founded in 2008, specialises in providing integrated PR planning, strategy and implementation and boasts clients such as the Jurys Inns Hotel Group and Cafedirect.
Margaret Street will retain its name and Ms Lorigan will assume the newly created role of PR CEO and head up Golley’s national PR network of 11 UK offices and the London headquarters.
In recent years, Wallace has assisted a number of other PR firms on corporate, commercial and IP matters.
Throughout 2009, Wallace has experienced an exceptional level of corporate activity, despite the downturn. Earlier this year, the firm advised on the $411.5 million sale of the global TIGI professional hair products business and its supporting advanced education academies, as well as advising on a significant acquisition in the technology sector, where Wallace’s longstanding client ID Business Solutions, a leading data management company, acquired InforSense. The firm also advises Enic International, the majority shareholder in Tottenham Hotspur FC, and the Enic group of companies, on a range of corporate matters throughout Europe.
Wallace attributes its resilience to the sound strategic management of the firm, whose strategy has been to grow organically, to remain very close to clients and to recruit a proportionally large number of “rainmakers” who, in times of slowdown, continue to attract work from existing and new sources.
Wallace’s position as a “West End firm” is more than just a geographical one; the firm advises a range of clients in the creative industries that define London’s West End, such as advertising, PR, media and entertainment. In 2009, Wallace advised Models 1 - the UK’s largest modelling agency - on various commercial aspects of a number of high profile advertising campaigns, as well as advising Models 1 and global supermodel Yasmin Le Bon on the successful negotiation and structuring of the recent collaboration with Wallis, a member of Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group. Yasmin Le Bon’s clothing line, titled “YLB”, is due to appear in stores in September. Wallace also acts for events companies, artists, festival organisers, post production companies, the owner of some of London’s most exclusive nightclubs and a well known independent television company.
John Woodhouse, lead partner on the Wallace team, commented, “It is a positive reflection on Wallace that our firm was chosen to advise this new client on what is often the most important business decision a business owner will ever make: the decision to sell. Wallace prides itself on having the ability to continually develop the practice and expand the firm’s client base; our lawyers recognise the importance of being commercially minded and they take the approach of running a business as well as being technical experts. This approach has stood us in good stead, as we continue to evolve at a time where law firms’ business strategies are truly put to the test.”