Law firm Bermans expands Manchester presence with move to larger city centre office

Law firm Bermans has expanded its presence in Manchester with a move to a larger city centre office to accommodate its growing team.

Bermans had outgrown its space on the third floor of One King Street, where it occupied 3,460 sq ft, and has now taken the entire fifth floor in the building on a 10-year lease.

The new base comprises 4,300 sq ft of space, with additional workstations alongside a 16-seater boardroom, two further meeting rooms, breakout areas and a staff kitchen area.

Designed and fitted out by property services company Kilmal, the new office has an open-plan workspace with exposed brickwork, natural colours and wood features and a host of hi-tech specifications.

Bermans currently has a team of 35 based in the city, with recruitment in the pipeline across numerous teams. The new office space gives it scope to increase staff numbers in Manchester to more than 60.

The firm is an award-winning, full-service commercial practice advising owner-managed and SME businesses, investors, developers and funders across the north west and nationally from offices in Liverpool as well as Manchester.

Its specialist areas of law include asset-backed lending, tech-enabled debt and asset recovery for lenders and businesses, insolvency, corporate, commercial, intellectual property, commercial litigation, employment and property.

Jon Davage, managing director of Bermans’ Manchester office and the firm’s head of corporate, said: “Due to the sustained growth of our Manchester practice areas and in line with our future plans, we needed to expand our space.

“One King Street is a prime location right in the heart of the city centre, so when it came to assessing our needs we decided to expand our presence by relocating to a bigger base in the same building.

“There’s a real desire in our team to be together in the office, and providing a high-spec, modern hub was a priority.

“Now we have more desks, more collaborative spaces, a bigger boardroom and additional meeting rooms. The new space is a fantastic, collaborative working environment with a really nice feel to it.

“It gives us scope for further significant growth, with imminent new arrivals in our employment, litigation and property finance teams, and further recruitment is planned.

“After this, we will turn our efforts to Liverpool, where the firm was founded. As the business evolves, we will want to invest in this office too and provide an improved space for our people to thrive in even more.

“Our strategy is to capitalise fully on our national expertise and strong network within the financial sector, which will supercharge growth within our property finance and debt and asset recovery divisions, along with focused organic growth across all other practice areas.”

The firm was founded by Keith Berman in 1970 and opened its Manchester office in 1985. Its team has been based at One King Street since 2018.

Bermans is part of MAPD Group, which was founded by Brian Cullen and Joanna Kingston-Davies in 2020 to power the growth of local law firms nationally through acquisition. The initials stand for Making a Positive Difference.