ILH head desperately wants to ditch the past

INTEGRATED Legal Holdings managing director Graeme Fowler is frank about the problems his company is working ­furiously to leave in the past.

Graeme Fowler, CEO and Managing Director of Integrated Legal Holdings.

INTEGRATED Legal Holdings managing director Graeme Fowler is frank about the problems his company is working ­furiously to leave in the past.

As far back as 2012, ILH had realised it needed a broader revenue stream and last financial year it thought it had found the solution. It identified a law firm with $20 million in revenue and multiple offices that would have given ILH the depth of market exposure it was looking for.

After spending a big part of his time trying to tie down that acquisition, it failed to eventuate. The real problem, however, was that while Mr Fowler had been focused on the acquisition, operational problems within the existing business started to emerge.

Until very recently, ILH did not have the depth of senior management that might have enabled both issues to be addressed ­efficiently. “You don’t do those sorts of acquisitions without lots of due diligence, internal and external experts’ reports — and the costs add up,” Mr Fowler said.

“But quite frankly, the biggest part of that during the 12 months was that it caused a distraction — a management distraction and that came down to me.” Under the management structure in place at the time, each of the company’s legal practices operated as separate businesses.

Mr Fowler has a blunt verdict on the previous structure of having separate businesses units with separate marketing plans, websites and management.

“They all had a head of business and they all reported through to me. The focus was on revenue growth and not cost savings or collaboration — that was on a best-efforts basis. “That has not worked,” he said.

ILH has two more steps before its problems can be left in the past: it needs to persuade its bank to sign off on a new lending covenant and it needs to win shareholder approval next month for the sale of its loss-making consulting division, Eaton Capital.