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case studies
West Midlands Safari Park
Ivan Knezovich and Peter Copsey
When your business is a safari park, and your assets include white lions, llamas, elephants and emus, you might expect some out of the ordinary legal issues to crop up from time to time.
In reality, when West Midlands Safari Park managing director Ivan Knezovich gives Peter Copsey at mfg Solicitors a call, it’s almost certainly about one of the issues that affect rather more traditional businesses, such as a potential HR problem or a planning issue.
Even the park’s takeover of two sea life centres, in Rhyl and Weston-super-Mare, was a fairly straightforward business acquisition – although Peter did draw the line at conducting a stock take of the fish!
Ivan joined the park nearly 30 years ago and for much of that time – he thinks more than two decades – mfg, or one of its predecessor firms, have provided legal services and support. That pleases him: “It’s good to have a bit of history,” he says.
Over those years, mfg have provided a wide range of expertise in different areas, from litigation to acquisitions, employee disciplinaries to environmental issues and land law to landlord and tenant matters.
Ivan’s a busy man. As well as running the safari park, which attracts 450,000 visitors a year and is home to more 1,130 exotic creatures, he’s chairman of Destination Worcestershire, the tourism body for the county, and is keenly aware that leisure is the fastest growing business sector in the UK.
So it’s important that he has a legal team that he can work with, and he likes the fact that he can pick up the phone and talk to Peter whenever he needs advice.
He says: “Peter and I have a very good relationship and each of us understands the other very well. Peter knows how I think, and what I am expecting of him – and he knows when to act and when to put the brakes on.”
Peter, who specialises in company commercial law, enjoys the strong working relationship he has developed with Ivan in the seven years since he has been his partner contact at mfg, and his dynamic approach: “Ivan is the man who does,” he says.
