Month: February 2015

Posted on

Vodafone

  • Group general counsel and company secretary: Rosemary Martin.
  • Team headcount: 350 lawyers.

Vodafone’s legal team is the equivalent of a sizeable law firm in its own right – housing 350 lawyers in 26 countries worldwide and across legal, compliance and corporate secretariat, with a central team based in the UK. Led by GC and company secretary Rosemary Martin, one of the most well-known and respected heads of legal in the industry, it draws plaudits from all areas.

James Conyers, GC at BSkyB, says: ‘I’ve heard about the sort of things Rosemary Martin is trying to achieve at Vodafone and I always follow what they are up to with interest – in particular the approach to diversity and also the thoughtful approach to managing and developing the internal team.’

After pioneering the outsourcing of work to alternative service providers such as Riverview Law, Obelisk Legal Support and Axiom, the team is now looking towards managing the multiple resources of the in-house legal team, offshore Vodafone lawyers and legal outsourcers.

The team is particularly noted for its diversity focus, especially towards gender. Martin comments: ‘At Vodafone we do quite a lot around diversity, particularly as regards gender. We have job-sharing, which we try to encourage. A couple of senior lawyers are job-sharing.’ In the group legal team itself, which supports the head office, there are 20 nationalities, with 43 men and 65 women.

The legal department at Vodafone is also leading the pack on knowledge sharing and new media. ‘When we talk to law firms about what we are doing on knowledge management, we are probably at the forefront or certainly comparable with the big in-house legal teams, or ahead of some of the law firms, which is quite gratifying as it is something we spend quite a lot of time and effort on,’ adds Martin.

Continue reading “Vodafone”

Posted on

HarperCollins UK

  • General counsel: Simon Dowson-Collins.
  • Team headcount: 12 in legal and contracts, including four lawyers.

The UK legal arm at publishing house HarperCollins is considered the ‘lifeblood of the organisation’, according to its chief Simon Dowson-Collins. In dealing with over 600 contracts a year for the acquisition of rights to publish books, the 12-strong team negotiates lucrative agreements with high-profile authors including George RR Martin, Veronica Roth, David Walliams and Nigel Slater.

Key to negotiations is ensuring royalties and rights are secured in those contracts, which allows the company to exploit its rights over the 70-year lifetime of copyright. ‘It is core to the business because it’s what we trade on – it’s essential we are at the front-end of the business,’ says Dowson-Collins.

Major mandates for Dowson-Collins, whose experience of in-house includes serving as a media defamation litigator at the BBC, include handling matters regarding an investigation into the so-called agency model – under which publishers rather than retailers set the price of e-books – by the European Commission. The company settled in 2012 after concerns were raised by the Commission that HarperCollins, alongside Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and Apple, had restricted the price of cheap e-books in breach of EU antitrust legislation.

Innovative structures put in place include the formation of a global piracy centre for the entire business, while forging external relations with the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, and notably establishing provisions for anti-bribery regulations and implementing a worldwide compliance programme.

Critical to the smooth operation is the department behaving collaboratively and collegiately, according to Dowson-Collins, and he says: ‘We live or die as a team and the ability to trust one another is crucial. You want people that care about what they do – that makes them trustworthy. Weak teams are internally competitive teams and contain people who are there for their own personal aggrandisement and ambition, before the good of others and the work they’re trying to do.’

Continue reading “HarperCollins UK”

Posted on

ITV

  • General counsel: Andrew Garard.
  • Team headcount: 87 lawyers, including 65 in the UK.

Over the past five years, ITV’s profitability has increased 300%, but costs in its tightly-managed legal and business affairs team have fallen 30%.

The legal team has made a concerted effort to bring work other than M&A and litigation in-house, and has standardised a menu of repeat contracts to give the commercial business a higher degree of autonomy.

The television broadcaster last year acquired a controlling interest in Leftfield Entertainment for an initial cash payment of $360m, with the remaining share value calculated by a profit multiple, an opportunity brought directly to GC Andrew Garard as a result of a contact made in the US. This is one of a number of recent acquisitions in the US and Garard says: ‘The legal team has been front and centre of each deal.’

Major disputes involving the team include a challenge to the pension regulator’s retrospective determination that ITV should make a financial contribution under the Pensions Act 2004 after Boxclever – a joint venture between Granada (now part of ITV) and Thorn – became insolvent in 2003, leaving a pension scheme deficit of around £62m by the end of 2009. Garard says: ‘We will be fighting it tooth and nail.’

The broadcaster is leading the field with its corporate social responsibility activities, driven by Garard and director of legal affairs and third-party sales Barry Matthews (named Rising Star In-House Counsel of the Year at the 2014 Legal Business Awards), which will this year see 100 underprivileged children take part in a week-long development programme – a programme that has quadrupled in size from last year.

ITV’s panel review this year will also see external law firms required to provide diversity statistics and explain what measures they have in place to improve those figures.

Garard banned the billable hour in 2008 and external work is conducted largely on a fixed-fee basis. He comments: ‘If fee-earners have a target of 2,000 billable hours a year, we are working with law firms to ensure that lawyers working on our rates are adequately rewarded.’

Continue reading “ITV”

Posted on

Balfour Beatty

  • General counsel and chief corporate officer: Chris Vaughan.
  • Team headcount: 51 lawyers.

It would be fair to say the legal team at international infrastructure group Balfour Beatty has had a tumultuous year with three profit warnings, a chief executive exit and merger talks with rival construction group Carillion. In addition, the team dealt with the sale of its large engineering consulting business Parsons Brinckerhoff to WSP Global in the US in a deal worth £753m.

‘We’ve had a busier year corporately than I can ever remember,’ admits general counsel (GC) and corporate officer Chris Vaughan. ‘It’s been massively intense and we’re still standing, we’re still fighting. In terms of corporate activity we’ve pretty much had it all. It has been a year in which the legal function has been very prominent.’

For Vaughan, a key element of his team’s success is getting quality people properly embedded in the business, as well as proactively managing risk. The legal team also features a number of senior lawyers – notably including head of group legal Keely Hibbitt and David Mercer, GC construction services UK.

And Vaughan’s team, one of a handful credited with spearheading the sole adviser mandate structure with Pinsent Masons, also expects the same from external counsel. According to Vaughan, having Pinsents as a sole adviser has not only engaged the law firm across the business, but has significantly cut costs and added value through other improvements in service.

‘I admire the team at Balfour Beatty, mainly because they trailblazed the arrangement that we then put in place with Pinsents,’ comments Kirin Kalsi, UK head of legal at E.ON. ‘It has changed and is still changing the way we think about external counsel for advice.’

Continue reading “Balfour Beatty”

Posted on

Heathrow Airport Holdings

  • General counsel: Carol Hui.
  • Team headcount: 16 lawyers.

Considered as much a business adviser as a legal one, Heathrow Airport Holdings GC Carol Hui is praised for her team’s ‘clear strategic focus’ and for navigating the company through complex transactional and regulatory issues, while reducing reliance on external legal support.

Since being taken private in a consortium led by Spain’s Ferrovial in a £10.3bn deal in 2006, the company has been enmeshed in sustained controversy regarding UK airport expansion, which has led to a prolonged legal tussle with competition authorities. Hui has been heavily involved with Heathrow’s bid to gain support for a third runway, a plan which would raise its capacity from 480,000 flights a year to a projected estimate of 740,000.

Former Slaughter and May lawyer Hui has also pushed through a substantive upgrade of a legal team that was underweight and historically focused on handling relatively low-level property matters. The team now includes recommended counsel Catherine Ledger, head of legal for operations, corporate and litigation, and Irina Janakievska, senior counsel for corporate and finance, who formed part of Hui’s team in the October 2014 sale of Aberdeen International Airport, Glasgow Airport and Southampton Airport to a consortium formed by Ferrovial and Macquarie Group for £1.05bn.

Prior to Hui’s arrival, BAA did not have a formalised roster of advisers. Having revamped the department within months, Hui effectively reduced reliance on external lawyers and keeps as much as 70% of work in-house. Cost-effective initiatives introduced for panel firms include volume rebates, while Hui has also managed to resource the department with six trainees, who are all provided by advisers. She further built up the legal function to include commercial, litigation, regulation and compliance support capabilities, demonstrating her ability to run a small team with wide responsibility, despite the regulatory complexities and multibillion-pound revenue of the company.

Continue reading “Heathrow Airport Holdings”

Posted on

BAE Systems

  • Group general counsel: Philip Bramwell.
  • Team headcount: 130 lawyers.

A FTSE 100 company, which is the third-largest defence group in the world and has more than 100,000 employees globally, needs a strong and varied in-house team. Fortunately, the legal department at BAE Systems has grown substantially since Philip Bramwell’s arrival in 2006 – legal has doubled and compliance has quadrupled during that time, while litigation costs have fallen 80%.

The shape of the team has also been overhauled, from a flat structure to one which has specialised capability and central management, with chief counsel in key areas of business. BAE’s legal team also operates a cab-rank model, first introduced into the UK in 2007, in which lawyers are available on a first-come-first-served basis. This initiative has been rolled out to other major markets, including Asia and the Middle East.

The team has formal training and development initiatives. For example, there is a clearly defined and detailed ‘matrix’ in place by which its junior lawyers are assessed and managed from two years’ post-qualification experience right up to GC level.

Significant mandates for the team in recent years include the high-profile, long-running competition investigation by US prosecutors and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) over a £6bn arms deal – Al Yamamah – with Saudi Arabia.

In 2010, there was a rare panel overhaul, with Magic Circle firms Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Allen & Overy and Linklaters making the cut, as well as Herbert Smith Freehills, Addleshaw Goddard, Pinsent Masons, Blake Lapthorn and Eversheds. After the team’s compliance and regulation chief counsel Mark Serfozo left for Rolls-Royce in July 2013, Bramwell appointed BAE’s global head of dispute resolution, Joanna Talbot, to identify trends that give rise to disputes in order to troubleshoot at an early stage. Bramwell himself remains one of the most highly regarded GCs in the UK.

Continue reading “BAE Systems”

Posted on

Royal Mail Group

  • General counsel: Neil Harnby.
  • Team headcount: 27 lawyers.

The legal team at Royal Mail has had a busier few years than most, with an initial public offering (IPO), a panel review, an inaugural corporate bond and two competition inquiries just some of the work the team has engaged in since the group’s GC Neil Harnby (pictured) took over in January 2012.

The £3.3bn IPO in particular, which included extensive due diligence across 37 countries, the transfer of historic pension scheme assets to the government and the company’s separation from the Post Office – all against a controversial political backdrop – has garnered the team admiration from many within the legal industry. Louise Bloomfield, employment partner at DAC Beachcroft, says: ‘The team was intrinsic to steering Royal Mail through its IPO. It is focused, sharp and consists of technically exceptional lawyers who put the business at the forefront of all that they do.’

Other highlights for the team include non-transactional mandates, such as the crafting of a comprehensive pay and conditions agreement – the first significant legally binding collective agreement with the Communication Workers Union, consisting of 139,000 people. Of the two competition inquiries meanwhile, the first is with a French competition authority over Royal Mail’s subsidiary GLS in France and the second in the UK where Ofcom is carrying out a review into the sustainability of the universal postal service.

Royal Mail’s deputy GC, Maaike de Bie – who led the company’s recent legal panel review – looks after the transactional side of the legal portfolio, while Harnby oversees the risk aspects and overall in-house function.

Continue reading “Royal Mail Group”

Posted on

Carillion

  • Director of legal services and company secretary: Richard Tapp.
  • Team headcount: 19 lawyers in the UK, four in Canada, two in Dubai; 50 staff, including lawyers, in Carillion Advice Services.

Described by one law firm partner as displaying ‘outstanding leadership and encouragement’, construction giant Carillion was one of the earliest adopters of innovative business solutions in the form of its own legal outsourcing arm, Carillion Advice Services (CAS). Carillion diverts the commoditised and quasi-legal portion of all its workload to CAS, which is also now used by its panel law firms to service their own clients’ needs.

In 2013, Slaughter and May announced it had begun offering the services of Newcastle-based CAS to Vodafone, and that arrangement has subsequently been extended to other clients.

CAS has, over the past 18 months, grown from undertaking Carillion’s contract review work across the UK to across the globe. GC Richard Tapp says: ‘Our lawyers love it. It frees them up to do things that are the best use of their time.’

Such a move has ultimately helped the company keep legal costs at the same level they were a decade ago.

Other moves to reduce costs include using external firms in a collaborative network, where firms agree standard forms of documentation for their Carillion work and meet twice a year. Tapp adds: ‘It works best if all the firms are getting work and we keep the network fairly small. I appreciate we are quite demanding so it’s quid pro quo.’ Each year, Carillion asks its network of advisers to identify the legal issues on the horizon that may impact its business.

The standout task for the team during 2014 was undoubtedly the £3bn negotiations over a combination with main rival Balfour Beatty, in which Tapp and his team – which includes Alison Shepley, GC for outsourcing; Jeremy Mutter, GC for construction and Anne Ramsay, GC for projects – played a key part. The deal ultimately fell through after the pair failed to agree terms.

Carillion also entered into a joint venture with ASK Real Estate and Tristan Capital Partners; an £800m landmark partnership with Sunderland City Council to secure regeneration activity within Sunderland and the wider north-east region; and is part of the £550m Aberdeen Roads consortium, previously operating under the collective name Connect Roads. Aberdeen Roads will inject an estimated £6bn into the local economy and create around 14,000 new jobs.

At engineering, IT and facilities service business NG Bailey, GC Scott McKinnell says: ‘They have clearly delineated risk processes and teams serving projects across the world, ensuring that this works commercially, operationally and legally and to a tight deadline of preparation.’

Continue reading “Carillion”

Posted on

The Crown Estate

  • Director of business operations and general counsel: Vivienne King.
  • Team headcount: five lawyers.

The Crown Estate is governed by an Act of Parliament that involves funnelling profits into HM Treasury – totalling around £2bn in the last decade – and currently manages a diverse property business valued at more than £8.6bn. Its well-regarded director of business operations and GC, Vivienne King, is responsible for more than the legal side of the business: she also spends a great deal of her time working on sustainability, public affairs, and health and safety matters.

Hogan Lovells global real estate chief Jackie Newstead says: ‘They know what they want, they know how to get there and they do it in a very nice way. Those are the hallmarks of an outstanding in-house team. That’s one of the advantages that a good in-house team gives you: you can get a sensible, experienced view from the team, which translates into a more intelligent instruction.’

Major deals for the team included the formation of a £320m joint venture vehicle with Oxford Properties to develop two super-prime blocks in St James’s Market and Lower Regent Street in 2013. In April, the sovereign property portfolio made greater efficiencies by halving its rural and coastal and Windsor Estate legal panel from four to two. The move saw Burges Salmon and Bond Dickinson re-appointed, while Clarke Willmott and Thomas Eggar lost out.

Head of legal Rob Booth says displaying a good moral code is an important aspect of the team discipline: ‘The legal team is very closely involved with the government and, therefore, the ethics piece. We play a moral compass role within our organisation. That requires the absolute highest standards of ethics because we’re effectively benchmarking an approach across the organisation.’

Continue reading “The Crown Estate”

Posted on

Westfield Shoppingtowns

  • General counsel: Leon Shelley.
  • Team headcount: 14 lawyers.

Described by the global head of real estate at one top-15 firm as being a ‘hands on, proactive team, close to all the issues with a no-nonsense, commercial, can-do approach’, Westfield’s is a tightly-managed team, with GC Leon Shelley also described as a ‘total star’.>

The legal team undertakes most of the shopping centre giant’s legal work internally. Westfield’s European lawyers, all currently based in London, are embedded within the relevant sectors of the business.

Shelley says: ‘When I arrived ten years ago Westfield spent tens of millions on legal services, but I have built it up so that we have great capability internally and operate a bit like a mini law firm that services all the business.’

With a highly variable external legal spend of around £7m to £10m depending on the level of activity in a given year, the team turns to external law firms for help with tax, litigation, corporate real estate and property work, and in its recent major transactions has used a combination of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, SJ Berwin and Ashurst. Westfield also uses DAC Beachcroft’s regional offices for repeat instructions.

Freshfields recently assisted on a £750m refinancing via a commercial mortgage-backed securitisation, a first for the in-house legal team.

While Westfield’s team is based in London, it is currently hiring a lawyer in Milan, in anticipation of a raft of work on Westfield Milan, which is expected to be the largest shopping centre in Europe.

Other than Shelley, Georgina McManus is singled out for being ‘a knock-it-out-of-the-park, excellent lawyer with a business brain’ and the pair are said to ‘help drive the business forward, they are not just an internal legal team’.

Continue reading “Westfield Shoppingtowns”

Posted on

Land Securities

  • Group general counsel and company secretary: Adrian de Souza.
  • Team headcount: eight lawyers.

Due to the nature of the industry, in-house real estate teams are traditionally smaller than most, tending to gift significant mandates to their chosen counsel. Group GC Adrian de Souza and his high functioning team at FTSE 100 company Land Securities outsource about 99% of their legal work, typically spending in the region of £15m-£20m externally.

‘The team here know their roles really well,’ comments de Souza. ‘They don’t do external lawyers’ work and they don’t do the business person’s work, but they
act as a seamless conjugate between the two. Every single sale for Land Securities has a bespoke legal agreement attached to it. Legal is right at the heart of our business and a relatively small legal team makes sure the work is done on a consistent and high-quality basis.’

One way in which the team ensures high-quality output is treating external lawyers as an extension of the in-house team, bringing them into the business and familiarising them with its specific model. Alongside this, the team also has an unusual market-shaping programme of identifying and supporting the rising stars in real estate practices across its law firms, safeguarding against a possible shortage of star lawyers in the years to come.

Like many in-house teams, the legal department at Land Securities does not think much of hourly rates, instead taking direct responsibly for driving the efficiency of its panel firms. Head of legal Alex Peeke, says: ‘Conventionally in real estate you are budgeting as a percentage of the transaction amount.’

The team’s highlights over the last year include the acquisition of a controlling stake in the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent – bought from Lend Lease Corporation for just under £700m, as well as the £1bn development of the iconic Walkie Talkie building, together with the Canary Wharf Group, which was 90% let at completion when it opened towards the end of 2014. But the team is arguably at its most effective around Victoria, where Land Securities is currently putting up around £2bn worth of buildings. It also has planning permission for a new residential tower worth over £1bn – the conversion of an office block, which is the tallest building in the area.

Continue reading “Land Securities”

Posted on

Jenny Lowe: Senior legal counsel, property and planning, Aggregate Industries

In January 2012, with five years’ post-qualification experience, Jenny Lowe joined Aggregate Industries from McGrigors, taking on the role of senior counsel for property and planning. Lowe took responsibility for a large property portfolio and managing all property-related transactions, including sales and acquisitions, estate management, litigation, minerals issues, planning, renewable energy and regulatory.

Since joining Aggregate Industries, Lowe has sharply reduced legal spend on property-related matters.

One real estate partner at a top five UK law firm says: ‘The industry that Jenny works within is very male-dominated but she is more than able to enlist the support and respect of her internal clients, which is an absolute must for success. I can recommend Jenny without exception.’

Continue reading “Jenny Lowe: Senior legal counsel, property and planning, Aggregate Industries”

Posted on

Sarah Doherty: Legal counsel, Coca-Cola

Sarah Doherty only completed her training contract at Coca-Cola in February 2012, having previously been a paralegal, but she has been quickly promoted to become the lead lawyer supporting Coca-Cola’s Great Britain and Ireland franchise operations team in London and Dublin.

Doherty’s area of responsibility includes negotiating high-value sponsorship agreements, such as the London Olympics 2012, FIFA World Cup 2014 and sponsorship of the London Eye. Doherty also deals with significant brand and product launches, including the launch in 2014 of SmartWater and Coca-Cola Life.

An intellectual property partner at one top 15 UK law firm comments: ‘Sarah isolates and deals with strategic issues with great skill and does so with a degree of sophistication that belies her experience. In order to handle the sheer volume of tasks she undertakes, she is extremely efficient but always great to work with. A real star.’

Doherty cites her biggest achievements as ‘playing a key role on major Coca-Cola sponsorships and activities such as the London Olympics in 2012, the extremely successful “Share a Coke” campaign and co-branding programmes for Diet Coke with international designers’.

Continue reading “Sarah Doherty: Legal counsel, Coca-Cola”

Posted on

Sarah Morton: Managing counsel, global litigation, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Shell

Having joined Shell in November 2011 from Debevoise & Plimpton, where she worked with former general counsel (GC) Peter Rees QC, Sarah Morton built the oil giant’s dedicated Europe, Middle East and North Africa (EMENA) litigation team from scratch, transferring four members from within Shell and recruiting the rest externally, to bring the team to 12 lawyers plus paralegals.

Aside from daily supervision of the EMENA team, Morton also sits on the leadership team for Shell’s litigation group, alongside eight other global heads, and is responsible for managing the EMENA region’s budget.

One nomination in support of Morton’s inclusion as a Rising Star says: ‘Considering her current role is the first she has carried out in-house, she has demonstrated real management and business acumen in how she has structured and run the team, creating a genuine sense of team spirit and can-do work ethos.

‘It is striking in our interactions with Sarah’s team, how consistently they approach litigation and the business requirements; no small feat considering the diversity of backgrounds and experience within that team.’

Continue reading “Sarah Morton: Managing counsel, global litigation, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Shell”

Posted on

Howard Landes: Chief counsel, corporate finance, BG Group

As BG Group’s chief corporate counsel, reporting to GC Graham Vinter, Howard Landes is the lawyer responsible for BG Group’s M&A and corporate finance matters globally.

Landes joined BG Group from Clifford Chance nine years ago and now regularly provides strategic advice to senior management on the energy giant’s major transactions and related issues. His key recent achievements include leading the legal function in successfully delivering multibillion-dollar securities fundraisings in the US and Europe in 2014, in executing one of Australia’s largest ever infrastructure deals, the $5bn sale by BG Group of its 540km pipeline network QCLNG Pipeline to APA Group.

Landes is described by a partner from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer as ‘extremely sophisticated and astutely commercial’. The partner adds: ‘[Howard] operates like a Magic Circle partner and general counsel at the same time. He is very smart, [an] excellent negotiator, understands internal drivers and commands significant respect internally and externally.’

Another City partner comments: ‘Howard has the ability to effortlessly navigate the global landscape of an industry with a multiplicity of challenges. He is available and responsive 24/7 and his knowledge and experience provide confidence to make big-money decisions.’

Continue reading “Howard Landes: Chief counsel, corporate finance, BG Group”

Posted on

Martin Graham: Senior vice president, Oaktree Capital

Martin Graham joined Oaktree Capital from Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2007 as assistant vice president (VP), becoming VP in January 2010 and senior VP in 2014. His role at Oaktree – one of the most influential houses in the alternative investment space – focuses on managing and executing pan-European distressed debt and private equity investments.

Key matters he has worked on include a $650m arbitration against a major international oil company and, in 2014, $1bn of debt fundraising across five different financing instruments for three portfolio companies.

The Freshfields-trained lawyer is commended externally for the volume and complexity of work he handled in 2014 alone, including a $320m senior secured bond by Harkand Finance; a $130m secured loan facility for Harkand Global Holdings backed by export credit support from the Norwegian government; and a €350m secured bond issued by SGD Group.

Continue reading “Martin Graham: Senior vice president, Oaktree Capital”

Posted on

Alice Marsden: Head of legal UK&I, Thomas Cook Group

Alice Marsden

Wragge & Co-trained, on qualification Alice Marsden joined Latham & Watkins as an associate before moving to Thomas Cook in January 2014 and becoming UK and Ireland head of legal three months later, just seven years after qualification.

An outsourcing lawyer by training, Marsden now heads a team of ten lawyers, including a number of new recruits, as Thomas Cook further boosts the quality of its UK legal offering.

In her own capacity Marsden supports the IT, HR, risk and marketing teams and has been heavily involved in Thomas Cook’s ongoing IT transformation programme, which will see it move globally onto the same IT infrastructure.

Paul Gilbert, chief executive of LBC Wise Counsel, comments: ‘I have been consulting in-house lawyers for 15 years and over that period I have been very fortunate to see some of the most talented young lawyers this country has. Among a few others who we have worked with, and who have also gone on to do great things, Alice has the temperament, drive and potential to be brilliant.’

Continue reading “Alice Marsden: Head of legal UK&I, Thomas Cook Group”

Posted on

Gary Partington: Associate General Counsel and Regional Head of HSBC Technology and Services legal, EMEA

Gary Partington qualified as an outsourcing lawyer at Ventura in April 2008 before joining HSBC’s technology and services (HTS) division in 2012, as senior legal counsel for supply contracts, providing operational and technical support to HSBC’s global businesses.

In April 2013, he was promoted to become Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) HTS head and has led on a number of major outsourcing deals for the global retail and investment bank.

HSBC did not have a dedicated HTS team prior to Partington’s arrival and he has been instrumental in creating and growing it into a dedicated 60-strong legal function.

One respected in-house consultant observes: ‘He is insightful, wise, generous and strategic. All in all, a top lawyer.’

Continue reading “Gary Partington: Associate General Counsel and Regional Head of HSBC Technology and Services legal, EMEA”

Posted on

Daisy Le Vay: Head of Litigation and Co-head of Corporate Legal, EMEA, Nomura

A former Linklaters litigation associate, Daisy Le Vay became an in-house lawyer with Virgin Atlantic in 2007 before joining Nomura in 2008 as an executive director in the Japanese bank’s litigation department.

As head of litigation, Le Vay is responsible for dealing with some of the most complex and high-profile issues Nomura faces. She manages a team of litigators and also co-heads a larger team of commercial, employment, IP and IT lawyers, as well as the company secretarial group.

One counsel at a Magic Circle firm comments: ‘Daisy is an exceptionally bright lawyer with a finely honed ability to spot the important points. She simultaneously gets every detail without losing the ability to see the wider picture. She is also an excellent and a confident communicator.’

What makes Le Vay stand out is her ‘exceptional intellectual ability and rigour. She is someone who always thinks strategically but can also make quick decisions and is totally in tune with her business’.

Continue reading “Daisy Le Vay: Head of Litigation and Co-head of Corporate Legal, EMEA, Nomura”