HF Welcomes Eight New Partners

The latest from HF for you;

HF, leading legal advisors to the commercial and insurance industries, has continued its expansion plans with the appointment of eight new Partners. The announcement follows the investment by CBPE at the end of 2024, alongside the firm’s ongoing organic growth. 

The Partners cover a range of specialisms, including Cyber Security, as well as Catastrophic & Complex Injury and Employment, and supports HF’s strategic focus on diversification and increased geographical reach within the UK & Ireland.

The eight new partners include:

• Peter Crewe, Restructuring & Insolvency – an experienced insolvency and commercial litigation specialist with exceptional technical expertise and a commercial approach. His specialisms include contractual disputes, professional negligence, shareholder disputes, insolvency litigation and corporate recovery transactions.
• Gareth Matthews, Employment – specialising in primarily advising businesses and senior individuals on both strategic and day-to-day HR issues, with wide ranging sector experience including hospitality, retail, construction, recruitment and manufacturing.
• Claire Dinoff, Catastrophic & Complex Injury – with significant experience in catastrophic and large loss claims, having initially worked for claimants before switching to work with insurers in 2009.  Her experience covers most areas of personal injury litigation with a bias towards motor claims and includes public and employers’ liability and policy coverage.
• Mark Dunn, Catastrophic & Complex Injury – specialising in claims arising from serious, and in particular fatal, road traffic accidents on behalf of major motor and composite insurers.
• Steven Smith, Property – with over 15 years’ experience in property risks and coverage, dealing with property-related insurance claims with a focus on policy coverage and high value subrogated recovery and liability claims and fraud.  He was heavily involved as an adviser to several leading insurers on business interruption claims during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Matthew Stanton, Casualty – specialises in personal injury claims with a focus on occupational disease cases. He has particular expertise in short tail diseases such as work-related upper limb/cumulative back and other conditions with experience including conditions such as Extrinsic Allergic Alveolitis, lead poisoning and Legionnaire’s disease and cases arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, including a fatality.
• Craig Kennedy, Cyber Consultancy – an experienced commercial litigator advising on financial crime, fraud, asset tracing, investigations, and cyber incident response. He helps clients strengthen their cyber resilience through executive training, incident response planning, business continuity strategy, and innovative cyber exercises and leads on the legal response to cyber incidents, advising on post-breach notifications, litigation, and regulatory investigations.
• Melanie Mooney, Credit Hire – an award winning and industry recognised expert in the field of credit hire, with a successful track record in handling complex and high value cases. She is a “trusted advisor” for many insurers, having built strong relationships with them through a combination of understanding the law and legislation alongside a keen commercial eye.

Ronan McCann, CEO & Managing Partner at HF said, “As we continue our growth trajectory, we need best-in-class talent to support our ambitions. We’re continuing to expand our reach in our priority sectors and in key locations. With this new talent, we can continue building on our reputation for being innovative and putting our clients’ needs first.”