Appointments: Thompsons adds to serious injury team with promotion

Thompsons Solicitors has strengthened its serious injuries division with a promotion for a senior team member. Samantha Hemsley, partner and senior serious injury solicitor at the Leeds-based firm, has been promoted to national co-ordinator for serious injury. She will focus on the Midlands and northern regions, while her counterpart James Davies will look after the south of England and Wales.

Savills has announced two key appointments to its rural estate management practice in York. Paul Ainscough, a director who is already head of the northern rural division at Savills, will move from the Lincoln office to join the York team to lead the estate management teams across Yorkshire and the North. Matthew Watson, an estate management specialist and associate, currently works with Savills in Nottingham and will join him to work with landowner institutions and private clients.

Dr Graham Davies has joined the Finance Yorkshire seedcorn team as an investment manager. Dr Davies joins the team, tasked with seeking investment in early stage technology-based ventures, after being venture manager at the University of Manchester Intellectual Property for the last two years where he has been helping to create, manage and offer support to spin-out companies from the university.

Shower tray manufacturer, JT, has expanded its sales team with the appointment of a new southern specification manager and southern account manager.

The Leeds-based manufacturer has appointed Samantha Hanks as southern specification manager and Darren Hammond as southern account manager. They previously worked with established companies including Impey and Ideal Standard.

Engineering firm KOSO Kent Introl has made four new key appointments. Gary Malone joins as area business manager, covering the Australian Territory, based in Perth, Australia.

Bill McKelvie and Nick Reid have been appointed as choke valve sales engineers. Aaron Beaumont comes on board as design engineer within the control valves department. He joins from Weir Power and Industrial.

York Potash, the company behind proposals for a new deep mine in the area between Whitby and Scarborough, has appointed Graham Clarke from Cleveland Potash as its new operations director. Mr Clarke has worked at Boulby mine all his career and is the current managing director.