Senior Partner · London · With the firm since 2003
Margaret Halden
Founded the firm with Anthony Rook in 2003 and has led it since. Advises chairs, chief executives and general counsel on the decisions that come before the statement.
Margaret Halden founded Halden Rook with Anthony Rook in 2003 and has been its senior partner since. She advises chairs, chief executives and general counsel, usually in the first days of a matter, when the decisions that will later be described in a statement are still being made.
She spent twelve years as a journalist, latterly as deputy business editor of a national daily, and seven as director of communications of an engineering contractor, where she ran the company’s communications through a public inquiry that lasted two and a half years. She has said that the inquiry taught her more about communications than journalism did, because every word the company published was read back to it under oath.
At the firm she chairs the risk committee, which approves every new client, and the editorial committee, which reads everything published in the firm’s name, including this page. She writes the partners’ letter to clients each January.
She does not give interviews about clients, current or former, and has not done so since 2003.
Selected experience
- Counsel to the chair of a listed engineering group during a criminal investigation into a site fatality, 2018 to 2020.
- Counsel to the board of a building society through the replacement of its chief executive, 2022.
- Counsel to a family-owned food manufacturer and its founder through a product withdrawal and a prosecution, 2023 to 2024.
Clients are not named. Matters are listed with the client’s agreement.
Speaking
Recent
- The board’s first hour. A private dinner for non-executive directors, London.
- What we owe the record. A lecture to postgraduate students of journalism, London.