Birmingham Office Continues To Invest In Growing Business Team

The Birmingham office of national law firm Irwin Mitchell has boosted its finance litigation team with three new appointments.

Fiona Hayles joins Irwin Mitchell as a senior associate from SGH Martineau. Specialising in finance litigation, she has wide-ranging experience in mortgage and general banking litigation including security enforcement, PPI claims and strategic portfolio advice.

She has specialised in financial sector litigation for over 10 years, during which time Fiona has acted for a full range of lenders including clearing banks, overseas banks and building societies. Fiona qualified as a solicitor in 2002 and has also worked at Shoosmiths and Wragge & Co.

Solicitor Rizwan Darr joins the business from Shoosmiths. He specialises in commercial dispute resolution with a particular focus on finance litigation. He has expertise in general banking litigation, professional negligence claims against solicitors and valuers, commercial guarantee claims, recovery under both secured and unsecured commercial loans, mis-selling of financial products and IP disputes.

Rizwan and Fiona are joined by Legal Executive Victoria Savage. Victoria moves to Irwin Mitchell from Wragge & Co and specialises in all types of banking and asset finance litigation. She has 10 years of finance litigation experience which ranges from mortgage recoveries work to high value fraud.

All three will be working in the existing finance litigation team which is headed by the office’s Head of Commercial Litigation, Mark Elder.

Commenting on the appointments, Chris Rawstron, partner and Head of Business Legal Services at Irwin Mitchell in Birmingham.

Expert Opinion

Irwin Mitchell is committed to building its commercial team in Birmingham and these latest hires are part of this ongoing investment. All three new starters have strong backgrounds in finance litigation and I have no doubt will be valuable additions to what is already a very strong team.” Chris Rawstron - Partner

This latest announcement follows on from Irwin Mitchell’s recent appointment of corporate partner, Nick Dawson, and senior corporate associate, Rob Laugharne.