Welcome to MPF Yorkshire

The MPF is the world's leading association of managing partners from across the spectrum of professional service firms. In Yorkshire we have created a local organisation that provides top-calibre educational and networking opportunities for all its members. By introducing thought-provoking and cutting-edge best practices that are transportable from one sector to another, we are dedicated to enhancing leadership and the status of the management team. more...

EVENTS

Meetings are run locally in Yorkshire and provide both educational and networking opportunities for managing partners and other senior members of the management team. MPF Yorkshire connects the local professional services community with the wider MPF network, whilst generating real value for members closer to home. As a membership organisation, all our meetings are member only. However, those interested in joining are welcome to attend one event as our guest in order to get a feel for the group.

Please contact your local Regional Director or MPF Executive Director, Paul Lemon if you wish to hear more about our events and/or membership.

SHARING KNOWLEDGE

In addition to a vibrant national roundtable programme to share knowledge and personal experience of management challenges, the MPF serves as an honest broker collecting and analysing confidential peer and client data.

Insights are curated and shared amongst leaders and their management teams worldwide to ensure professional firms can take better informed decisions on aspects of firm strategy.

Examples include:

The final piece in the knowledge mix are confidential Peer groups that allow leaders to share ‘here and now’ experiences and challenges with others in an intimate an confidential team working environment. Member only groups are organised around areas of special interest, management roles and experience.

REPRESENTATION

The Forum has been a noisy campaigner for over 15 years in changing internal attitudes towards practice management in professional firms. This has seen various campaigns, articles, surveys and reports on behalf of members to share best practice and prompt quality discussion amongst the firm management team.

Since 2011 we have been working with a UK government advisory board, the ‘Professional & Business Services Group’, whose role is to raise issues and share ideas that impact the ‘competitiveness of UK Plc’. The ‘‘MPF CEO Priorities Monitor’’ helps firms and policy makers take decisions based on an improved understanding of prospects, priorities and challenges seen by the professions.

AWARDS

We organise the MPF Awards for Management Excellence, a unique opportunity to honour and emulate those advisory firms across the professions that have been judged by independent experts as being the best managed and therefore highly attractive to clients and employees. Widely recognised as the premier Awards for those with practice management roles, the competition has been running since 2002.

COMMITTEE

Chair: Peter Smart is a senior partner in the Leeds-based national law firm, Walker Morris, having very recently stepped down as executive Chairman of the firm . He has been involved in the management of the firm for almost twenty five years, having previously held a number of other senior management roles, including Managing Partner, Finance Partner and Marketing Partner. He is a Corporate lawyer specialising in M & A. His work has mainly involved project-managing larger deals. Much of his work has been done at board level, where he has acted as principal corporate adviser on matters of substance or sensitivity. He has held a number of directorships, including Allied Textile Companies plc, at the time of its takeover by 3i plc, and Yorkshire Housing Trust plc. He is presently a director of Rensburg Aim VCT plc, a fully listed venture capital trust, as well as a number of private companies.

Director: Michelle Render is managing director of Marketing First Limited, a marketing advisory services company. Between 1998 and 2009 she was a company director and head of marketing with national company registration and property agency, York Place Company Services and its parent company Stanley Davis Group.

Paul Manning is the Regional Senior Director in the Leeds Office of property advisor GVA, which consists of around 65 people covering all the major property disciplines. Paul is also Head of the Business Rates team, which has an enviable track record in securing rates refunds for a wide variety of clients. Paul has represented most of GVA’s major clients since 1993 in the Yorkshire and North East region, including Ministry of Defence, Royal Bank of Scotland, Telereal Trillium, DLA Piper, HM Revenue & Customs and Ministry of Justice. In addition, Paul has been involved in the negotiation of Memoranda of Agreement with the Valuation Office Specialist Rating Unit for classes of property such as Bus Garages, Crown Courts and Prisons for recent Rating Lists.

Matthew Stroh leads Grant Thornton's Yorkshire's team of Professional Practice experts which specialises in partnership and LLP audit, tax and advisory work. As well as a particular expertise in financial reporting for LLPs, Matt is also a Solicitors' Accounts Rules expert. Drawing on his previous experience as a University Lecturer and time on secondment to the firm's national technical department, Matt undertakes a number of training roles in the market place and with clients, such as in our training partnership with the Leeds Law Society.

DETAILS OF OUR NEXT EVENT

Getting partner profit sharing right

Gordons, Riverside West, Whitehall Road, Leeds, LS1 4AW

Tuesday 4 June 2013

Why are so many professional service firms currently reviewing their partner profit sharing arrangements? Why can it be so hard to do? And how should managing partners go about doing it successfully?

Further details and RSVP

ABS - Fight or Flight?

Crombie Wilkinson Solicitors, 19 Clifford Street, York, YO1 9RJ

Thursday 20 June 2013

With the ABS regime in its second year, and with some 139 ABSs licensed at the beginning of May 2013, Chris Marston, Head of Professional Practices at Lloyds TSB Commercial, will give a presentation on the current position and the steps that strongly performing traditional firms are taking to remain vibrant and viable in the face of new competition. We expect a lively Q&A session and debate afterwards.

Further details and RSVP