CG Professional makes senior appointments and opens new office

Lancashire-headquartered firm CG Professional has announced further senior appointments as they expand and open another office in city centre Manchester. 

Blackpool born Peter Williams is joining CG as a partner and head of the real estate team, and Clare Naylor joins as a managing associate in the real estate team. Both have made the move from DAC Beachcroft where Peter was a partner for 16 years.

The appointments have been made to extend CG’s service offering to clients and to assist with an increased growth in demand as they open their new city centre offices in the XYZ Building in Spinningfields.  

Peter’s specialism is property finance and investment, but he is experienced in all aspects of commercial real estate, including advising developers, property companies and corporate occupiers in relation to sales, acquisitions and asset management. 

Peter has specialist knowledge and experience in development joint ventures and grant funding agreements and regularly acts for local authorities and private sector developers as recipients of the grant funding. 

Peter said: “I’m incredibly excited to be taking on this new role. CG’s ethos and culture is like no other I know of within the industry and it’s so refreshing to see things being done in this way, where client's needs are placed front and centre. The old school hourly rate way of working has been thrown out of the window and we actually work in a way that totally benefits the clients. It frees us up as lawyers to focus on service and truly act as trusted partners to our clients.  

“The depth of the relationships we foster at CG helps us to understand our clients and how they work so we can provide guidance at a strategic level and help them make those crucial business decisions.”  

CG has disrupted the legal sector since it was established just over six years ago, moving away from the traditional hourly rate model, which so often causes friction with clients. By doing things differently to traditional law firms and with a younger senior leadership team than their peers, they are seen as a new generation of lawyers delivering services to clients exactly how they want it and with a commercial approach to pricing.  

Peter added: “The fact CG have a dedicated client relationship director who is purely focused on client experience is tremendous bonus for clients. Someone who works across all sectors and can look at the client's business and help them understand their needs and then assist and advise on where and how to get the best value services is unique, I think, in a law firm. It absolutely makes CG stand out from the crowd.” 

Managing partner Benjamin Dredge said: “Peter and Clare are a great fit for CG having worked together for a number of years and have a strong reputation in the sector. Peter has a vast amount of experience and is well known known for his commerciality and outcome-focused approach, which is what we’re all about at CG - putting clients front and centre to deliver the best outcome.  

“We’ve seen demand for our services grow significantly over the last few years and we’ve recruited talent to keep up with this growth, which is also why we’ve opened a new office in Manchester and opened an office in Liverpool last year.  

“We’re proud of our Lancashire roots and it is obviously still a vital market for us, but a Manchester office definitely gives us more scope to service city centre clients.”    

Photo: Left to right: Andy Dunn client relationship manager, Clare Naylor managing associate, Peter Williams partner head of real estate, Benjamin Dredge managing partner