Amanda Miller Collins
Vice president and lead European counsel
SHIRE
As a UK-focused, Irish-headquartered entity with operational headquarters in the US, primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and a secondary listing on Nasdaq, Shire’s legal team needs a lot of cross-border expertise. The former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer lawyer Amanda Miller Collins has been part of Shire’s legal division since 2003 and, where the pharmaceutical industry has witnessed frenzied deal-making in recent years, has been tasked with helping co-ordinate the company’s growth.
Following Flemming Ornskov’s appointment as chief executive in 2013, the pharma group has acquired around $50bn worth of assets, transforming it into one of the world’s leading drug makers. This has included Slaughter and May advising it on a $5.2bn purchase of biotech NPS Pharmaceuticals, and its bid for Dyax Corp in the US for $5.9bn in 2015.
‘Amanda didn’t start out in this industry, but she is rising quickly.’
Other transactional activity included its ultimately successful £19bn hostile takeover bid for rare disease specialist Baxalta. Shire’s bid for Baxalta came after it was nearly taken over itself by Illinois rival AbbVie in 2014, a proposed $54bn tie-up.
Bonella Ramsay, global co-chair of DLA Piper’s life sciences sector group, notes Miller Collins has quickly ascended the corporate ranks at Shire, commenting: ‘There is a very good team at Shire. It is a complex industry, so you watch people getting promoted, and going from one area to another and getting different expertise. That is an important quality ultimately for becoming a GC. Amanda didn’t start out in this industry, but she is rising quickly.’
Sean Roberts
Senior vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer
GLAXOSMITHKLINE CONSUMER HEALTHCARE
Dubbed a ‘bloody brilliant lawyer’ by Addleshaw Goddard’s retail and consumer group head Andrew Rosling, Sean Roberts ranks at the most senior end of this year’s GC Powerlist for his established 20-year career at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Appointed legal chief of the consumer healthcare division in 2013, and tasked with managing a 90-strong legal and compliance team, Roberts has been at the corporate coalface of major strategic decisions.
Close to chief executive designate Emma Walmsley, Roberts is cited for advising on GSK’s £20bn consumer health joint venture with Novartis in 2015, a complex deal considered more significant for GSK than for Novartis, where the British group’s market value was less than half that of its Swiss rival at the time. The Simmons & Simmons-trained lawyer was appointed general counsel and chief compliance officer designate of the proposed joint venture, and became a member of the strategic leadership team.
‘A bloody brilliant lawyer.’
Following the agreement, an internal restructuring gave Roberts responsibility for 120 legal and compliance staff, as well as oversight of a matrix-style shared service network. One referee notes: ‘He is doing great work.’
During the ’90s, he spent his early career at Simmons’ London office before joining GSK as legal head for the Middle East and Africa in 1998. Quickly ascending the corporate ranks, Roberts served in multiple managerial roles, including as appointed lead counsel for the global drug safety division in 2005 and vice president for legal operations for Asia-Pacific, Japan and emerging markets, and was bolstered to serve on the global legal management team in 2007, and as vice president for corporate legal operations in the UK and US in 2011. That same year he became a member of GSK’s disclosure committee and assumed responsibility for legal within the dermatology division.
Claude Bahoshy
Deputy general counsel
ALLIANCE HEALTHCARE, WALGREENS BOOTS ALLIANCE
Claude Bahoshy is praised for his handling of ‘high-pressure, financially intricate transactions’ on behalf of Alliance Healthcare, a division of Walgreens Boots Alliance that distributes healthcare products throughout Europe.
Responsible for all legal issues arising within the UK and Ireland, Bahoshy advises on transactional activity, distribution and licensing, competition and antitrust, litigation, compliance and restructuring. Currently a board member of its UK committee and adviser to senior management, he has spent more than a decade developing his legal skills in-house.
Trained at Simmons & Simmons, Bahoshy secured his first in-house role at Interbrew in 2002 as legal director for global mergers and acquisitions. Relocated to Belgium, he was part of a team responsible for instructing and leading external counsel teams on company transactions. In 2005 Bahoshy was made sole legal counsel responsible for all legal matters connected with the company’s market development function, a role that required drafting international licensing and distribution agreements, joint venture documentation, franchising agreements and memoranda of understanding, and leading legal negotiations.
Joining InBev in 2006, and initially responsible for legal and compliance for its Asia-Pacific operations, Bahoshy was given the role of general counsel for the UK and Ireland following its $11.5bn merger with American brewer, Anheuser-Busch, in 2008. He joined Alliance Healthcare in 2012.
Bahoshy’s skillset includes managing the legal hurdles and logistics for Alliance Healthcare following the merger of Walgreens and Alliance Boots in 2014, a deal that created the largest chemist chain in the US and one of the largest retailers in the world.
One referee comments: ‘Claude always works very closely with the client to understand priorities and the appetite for risk. He manages the issue very sensitively and practically to ensure maximum upside and minimum risk to the business.’
Associate GC, IP
CHEMO
Previously a partner at Bird & Bird and Freehills, Tomos Shillingford has considerable experience in pharmaceutical intellectual property, holding roles as senior patent counsel at Actavis and director of IP litigation at Allergan before joining Spanish healthcare outfit Chemo Group as associate general counsel for IP last year.
Following the takeover of Allergan by Actavis in 2015, Shillingford managed the company’s IP litigation for the group internationally (excluding the US). This involved mainly patent litigation but also included trade marks, copyright, breach of confidence, competition law and regulatory issues.
At Actavis, Shillingford managed litigation against Pfizer, where the Court of Appeal in October 2016 affirmed the High Court’s decision that the patent covering Lyrica (pregabalin) for pain was not infringed by Actavis and also found that patent claims generally relating to pain and neuropathic pain were invalid. Shillingford had a small team of three direct reports and managed around 70 cases, mostly concerning patent litigation around the world.
‘I took a decision to move to Chemo as they are building in a similar way that Actavis did and we are putting structures in place to move the company away from a small company mindset,’ says Shillingford. ‘We have lots of different things going on – a business-to-business generics offering, we’ve got a new start-up generics business in the US and the Nordics. We have a brand in about 40 countries and that is expanding massively and we have got a biologics arm, which has six products in development and scope for a lot more. There is a lot going on across the group and that is very exciting. We’ve got a growth plan to double revenue in five years, which is astronomical.’
At Chemo, there are 15 lawyers, mostly general commercial, some corporate and M&A and Shillingford manages a team of two – one trade mark lawyer and one patent lawyer – with a budget of around €2.5m for litigation.
‘The main bit of my practice is patent litigation – we have various cases ongoing in Europe and in the US, which is a challenge for me. There is a lot of paragraph four certification in the US. There is also due diligence, contractual support for IP issues and regulatory,’ adds Shillingford.
Elaine Johnston
Senior associate general counsel
BTG
Cited in the GC Powerlist: The Team Elite 2015, Elaine Johnston was promoted to senior associate general counsel (GC) less than six months after joining BTG in the summer of 2014.
Praised for her ‘fierce commitment to BTG’s interests, combined with outstanding commercial acumen’, Johnston has become a ‘pivotal member’ of the company’s legal team headed by GC Paul Mussenden.
Having initially joined as a temporary lawyer from healthcare company Abbott in 2014, one referee recalls: ‘I was particularly impressed with Elaine as soon as she joined BTG. She went on holiday during a transaction and was dialling in to conference calls while driving to France. She wasn’t even a permanent member of the team!’
‘She has an in-depth knowledge of BTG’s businesses and, just as importantly, BTG’s culture.’
Since then, Johnston has been given responsibility for legal oversight of key parts of the business, which requires much travel to the west coast of the US, and has worked on successful acquisitions, such as Galil Medical.
Says one partner: ‘She is very good technically, with an in-depth knowledge of BTG’s diverse businesses and, just as importantly, BTG’s culture, which the entire organisation from the chief executive down are passionate to maintain.’
Caroline Stockwell
EMEA legal, therapeutic and business conduct lead counsel
GILEAD SCIENCES
Caroline Stockwell has been credited for her extensive industry knowledge within the pharmaceutical and life sciences sector. Trained at Addleshaw Goddard, she moved to DLA Piper in 2000 where she focused on litigation and regulatory work.
Other in-house roles included a two-year stint as senior solicitor at automotive company Group Lotus until 2005 before rejoining DLA as a partner, and then serving as assistant general counsel for the research and development unit at Pfizer until 2016. Her role at Gilead is heavily focused on compliance issues, where the company houses a dedicated unit ensuring adherence to legal and ethical standards of business conduct.
Prior to qualifying as a solicitor, Stockwell worked for a multinational pharmaceutical company where she advised company facilities in Europe on environmental compliance.