HWF Partners expands tax insurance team in London and Dubai

Two senior hires signal growing demand for transactional risk insurance across structured finance and Middle East M&A markets.

By Disrupts Editorial Team
A modern conference room features a long wooden table surrounded by grey chairs, with bright natural light streaming through large windows overlooking a blurred city skyline.

HWF Partners, the specialist transactional risk insurance broker, has announced two senior appointments to its tax insurance practice: Stuart Cook as head of structured solutions in London and Panayiota Burquier as tax director in Dubai. The hires extend a growth push that has seen the firm establish dedicated tax leads across Italy, Central and Eastern Europe, and Spain over the past 18 months.

The appointments are routine specialist-hire news with no cross-sector or macro-disruptive angle. The press release contains no figures on revenue, deal volumes, headcount growth, market-size projections, or technology deployment. HWF's core business is transactional risk insurance brokerage, a segment of the broader insurance and M&A advisory market that sits firmly within financial services.

What the hires signal

Cook brings over 30 years of experience spanning tax, structured finance, and transaction origination, with senior roles at Chase Manhattan, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, and Société Générale, where he spent 15 years as global co-head of structured solutions. His mandate at HWF is to grow origination within the structured finance community, which the firm describes as "historically underserved" by the transactional risk market.

Burquier joins from a background in M&A tax advisory at Deloitte, Gibson Dunn, and CMS, with a focus on cross-border deals, joint ventures, and investment fund structuring. She will lead HWF's tax insurance proposition across the Middle East, Türkiye, and Africa, a region the firm identifies as a major contributor to its recent expansion.

Editorial assessment

This is a personnel announcement from a specialist insurance brokerage. There is no technology convergence angle, no cross-sector collision, and no macro or geopolitical substance that would differentiate coverage on Disrupts from a wire summary. The story belongs, if anywhere, on a financial services trade title. It does not meet Disrupts' editorial threshold for a convergence-angle brief.

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