Further expansion at Kennedys with hire of five-strong team from Mayer Brown

We are pleased to announce that we are strengthening our insurance practice with five significant lateral partner hires, considerably enhancing our multi-jurisdiction capabilities.

The arrival of David Chadwick, Ingrid Hobbs, Tim McCaw, Andrew McGahey and Andrew Westlake brings the total number of partner hires in 2017 to 33. All will be joining our London office except Andrew McGahey, who will be relocating to Ireland to join our team in Dublin.

David Chadwick was head of Mayer Brown’s London Insurance and Reinsurance Group. His practice focuses in particular on political risk and trade credit with deep relationships in that market. He is also a specialist in financial institutions’ claims and professional indemnity and has considerable experience of reinsurance disputes. David has advised on all major issues impacting the financial markets including significant claims emanating from the global financial crisis.

Ingrid Hobbs is a specialist insurance litigator with experience of both coverage and defence of claims across a broad range of sectors including product liability and recall insurance, technology and cyber risks, professional indemnity, financial institutions, media and publishing houses and directors’ and officers’ liability. Ingrid is highly regarded by many leading insurance companies and Lloyd’s syndicates, as well as insured entities for her expertise and commercial approach to resolving disputes.

Tim McCaw advises insurers on coverage aspects of high value property and casualty claims and cross border product liability/product recall claims. He has extensive experience of defending professional negligence claims against a wide range of professionals including solicitors, valuers and auditors. Tim also has experience of advising insurers on political risk and trade credit claims and drafting policy wordings.

Andrew McGahey has advised insurers on claims involving directors and officers, financial institutions and professionals. He is also experienced in dealing with claims under warranty and indemnity and Public Officering of Securities Insurance (POSI) policies, as well as transactional liability insurance matters.

Andrew Westlake specialises in advising political risk and trade credit insurers, advising on CEND (Confiscation, Expropriation, Nationalisation and Deprivation), contract frustration, political violence, trade disruption, structured trade credit and whole turnover trade credit. His practice includes both High Court litigation in London and international arbitration under LCIA (London Court of International Arbitration) and ICC Rules.

The team will officially join us early in the New Year.