Partner · London · With the firm since 2015
Owen Hallworth
Runs the Desk, the firm’s research team, and its narrative risk service: who is likely to write about a client, and what they are likely to ask.
Owen Hallworth runs the Desk, the firm’s research team of nine, and leads its issues anticipation and narrative risk work. The Desk tells clients which stories could be told about them, who is most likely to tell them, what those people have written before and what they are likely to ask next.
He spent ten years in open-source research, first for an insurer’s special risks unit and then for a firm that prepared due diligence reports for law firms, before joining Halden Rook in 2015 to build the Desk. He became a partner in 2019.
He is responsible for the firm’s narrative risk files and for the rules that govern them: what may be kept, from which sources, for how long, and who may read it. Everything in a file comes from published or publicly available material, and every file is reviewed every six months and closed when the matter it supports is closed.
He writes the firm’s annual board readiness survey and is, by general agreement, the person in the office least likely to be surprised by anything.
Selected experience
- Narrative risk assessment for a listed technology group ahead of a contested acquisition, 2022.
- Building a standing issues register for a European bank’s board risk committee, 2024 to date.
Clients are not named. Matters are listed with the client’s agreement.
Speaking
Recent
- The stories that could be told about you. A briefing for audit and risk committee chairs, London.