The Financial Times
General counsel: Dan Guildford
Team size: 20
Major law firms used: Pinsent Masons, RPC, DLA Piper, Bristows, Berwin Leighton Paisner, Clyde & Co, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, Davis Wright Tremaine, Jenner & Block
In January, The Financial Times (FT) broke the story of the Presidents Club dinner. This went on to dominate the UK news and gain global reach, becoming the most read story ever on FT.com. The exposé of a black-tie, men-only fundraising event jolted London’s business and political circles, becoming a focal point for public outrage over sexual harassment and the objectification of women.
For the FT’s legal team, particularly its editorial lawyer Nigel Hanson, the story raised significant legal issues, including questions of defamation, privacy, confidence and data protection, advising on the enforceability of a non-disclosure agreement that the undercover reporter was required to sign without being given a chance to read its contents, the application of provisions of charities law, statutory reporting restrictions covering anonymity for victims of alleged sexual offences, and ethical issues such as the use of subterfuge and undercover reporters.
GC Dan Guildford says the process highlights how integral the FT’s legal team is to its editorial decision making. ‘It is important that we have lawyers who are genuinely passionate about the FT product and believe in its principles. We all care about high-quality, impactful journalism and are prepared to work hard to ensure it gets delivered. The team is helping to create and maintain the legal and contractual framework that supports our subscription models, and ensuring that our journalism avoids the twin risks of excessive and insufficient caution.’
The team has also been involved in a number of important ‘open justice’ challenges to facilitate press reporting of the courts, including leading a group of five media organisations in successfully challenging an arrangement where the former head of the Financial Services Authority would otherwise have given evidence in private in the Lloyds Bank shareholder litigation.
‘We have lawyers who are genuinely passionate about the FT and believe in its principles.’
The legal team’s contribution to the FT was highlighted by a long list of nominations from private practice. Ian Gruselle of Bristows says the team works in ‘an environment that is constantly moving, with legal issues developing 24 hours a day. The clarity of thought, and the ability to understand how the legal issues impact on the business and its commercial objectives, make this an outstanding, and an outstandingly led, in-house team.’
Aside from supporting the FT’s journalism, the team has advised on transactions including the acquisition of Longitude Research, a provider of thought-leadership research, the acquisition of Silicon Valley technology company GIS Planning and the sale of the New York Institute of Finance, comprising businesses in the US and China.
Guildford and assistant GC John Halton have helped to develop opportunities for growth following the FT’s acquisition by Japan’s largest media company, Nikkei. In 2017, the parties formed two joint-venture businesses, Nikkei FT Learning and scoutAsia. Other projects with Nikkei include the digital transformation of English-language publication Nikkei Asian Review and the development of a new website for The Nikkei newspaper.
Nicole Livesey of Pinsent Masons comments: ‘The FT’s business is fairly unusual and complex, operating in a fast-moving environment, which is facing ongoing digital disruption. The team’s experience is broad and deep enough to cover all bases, and the team is integral in identifying new revenue streams and business opportunities for the FT, particularly digital opportunities.’
Following the Nikkei acquisition, the team has also taken on its first Asia-based lawyers, hiring counsel in both Beijing and Hong Kong. Closer to home, it has sought to manage costs by introducing a Belfast-based nearshoring operation, comprising Cher Wright, Sinead Hanna, Conn Burns and Mark Agnew.
Guildford concludes: ‘It is a team full of outstanding lawyers who work well together. They are respected by and involved in the business, and are a hugely important aspect of the brand’s enduring strength.’
GVC Holdings
General counsel: Robert Hoskin
Team size: Ten
Major law firms used: Addleshaw Goddard, Bird & Bird
All bets have been off in the fast-changing and highly-regulated gaming and betting industry in recent years. It has seen everything from high-level consolidation between some of the industry’s biggest players, to the rise of online platforms and regulations struggling to keep pace. In the middle of all this, GVC Holdings has risen to FTSE 250 status through a series of acquisitions. A blockbuster £4bn takeover of Ladbrokes Coral Group has the company poised to take another step up the ladder.
For head of legal, secretariat and compliance, Robert Hoskin, all this is being managed by a lean team of just four lawyers in each of Gibraltar and London. His key people are the heads of those two geographies, Ciara Lally and Tim Endersby. The team’s ambition, work ethic and adaptability are its key strengths during a time of substantial activity, says Hoskin.
‘It’s a young team, but there’s a lot of experience of online gaming, which is pretty key as it’s a challenging sector to navigate. The speed of the sector, the regulatory challenges and the laws, which haven’t always kept up with the internet and have struggled on occasion to deal with online gaming in particular, raise all sorts of issues.’
Another big project over the last few years has been creating individual contracts for all the third parties who provide GVC with games for its huge online casino offering. For Hoskin, the team’s M&A work ‘definitely stands out’. In late 2017, GVC launched a proposed £3.9bn takeover of rival Ladbrokes. A year earlier, it completed a contested takeover of gambling company Bwin for £1.1bn and in 2013 pushed through a £485m takeover of Sportingbet.
The current takeover will see Ladbrokes Coral GC Lindsay Beardsell take control of the company’s legal team, with Hoskin’s focus shifting to his other roles. He comments: ‘They have their own legal team set up and it will be a case of their GC deciding what structure is needed for the combined business going forward. I hope we don’t lose decent people in this process.’
Addleshaw Goddard partner Nick Pearey comments: ‘[Hoskin] is very experienced, very calm under pressure and has seen it all. The gambling sector is going through a period of rapid consolidation. There is a push for scale and synergies against a backdrop of ever-changing regulation around the world. It is a dynamic and fast-paced environment to work in: GVC’s legal team thrives on this.’
BT
General counsel: Sabine Chalmers
Team size: 515
Major law firms used: Allen & Overy, Bird & Bird, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Clifford Chance, Linklaters
Everyone has a view on BT, which veteran legal chief Chris Fowler believes has one of the most complicated stakeholder environments he has ever worked in. ‘You’ve got shareholders, customers, suppliers, regulators, governments and agencies around the world and they all have multiple demands and considerations: you could be dealing with government, but it’s also a significant customer, as well as a policymaker. It’s pretty complex.’
Fowler, BT’s technology, service and operations GC, who doubles as the in-house arm’s chief operating officer (COO), contends the high-profile nature of this environment, mixed with the vast array of issues it raises, is behind the strength of the well-regarded legal function. The team has a budget of about £70m, of which about a third is spent externally.
It was already considered a trailblazer as one of the first in-house legal teams to obtain an alternative business structure licence, and for launching its successful legal process outsourcing venture. In early 2017, BT reached an agreement with regulator Ofcom to separate its network division Openreach into a distinct business. It also completed the acquisition of EE for £12.5bn in early 2016, with consumer division GC Russell Johnstone earning praise for managing the newly-combined teams, along with a 2017 deal with Sky to sell channels on each other’s platforms. Not to mention the 18,500 claims the litigation team in Sheffield has dealt with over the past year – earning revenue for BT from third parties.
Chris Fowler: ‘We’ve become more aware of the need to manage legal on an end-to-end basis.’
For the legal function it has been a significant year of change internally. The company appointed former Anheuser-Busch InBev legal chief Sabine Chalmers its GC, effective April, following the announcement that Dan Fitz – one of the in-house legal market’s most influential and admired GCs – was stepping down after seven years. Fitz will remain on BT’s executive committee as company secretary, while the broader legal, governance and compliance teams have been brought under a common reporting structure with a single budget.
‘We’ve become more aware of the need to manage legal on an end-to-end basis,’ says Fowler. ‘As a legal team we will deliver a revenue stream of £14m this year as well as manage an overall cost base. We can run that more effectively from a single place, held accountable for delivering an overall EBITDA outcome.’
BT continues to use alternative suppliers, such as Elevate, Axiom, Halebury, NewGalexy Services and Obelisk Support, and has launched a number of technology initiatives, such as legal project-management software, document management and an internally-developed software tool for the wider business to seek automated regulatory advice on complex global transactions. A counsel management team tasked with ensuring external matters are scoped and instructed on consistently has saved more than £1.3m. For example, sales teams now use an automated process to make a legally-vetted offer on the spot.
On his COO role, which he picked up last July, Fowler says: ‘We’ve got a disbursed cost base, so a big part of the role is trying to get your arms around that, establishing a credible baseline and providing management information that allows the leadership team to make more educated decisions and plan for the future. When you oversee the entirety of the legal, governance and compliance function, apart from the group GC, the COO gets as much, if not more, insight into what’s happening across the team.’
Sky
General counsel: James Conyers
Team size: 130
Major law firms used: Herbert Smith Freehills
The legal team at communications giant Sky, led in the UK and Ireland by GC Vicky Sandry, prides itself on keeping the majority of its work in-house. The rationale is that it allows the team maximum room for development, while also adding value.
However, this approach is not always possible, especially when considering that 2017 was bookended by an £18.5bn takeover bid by 21st Century Fox and a £22.1bn approach from broadcasting giant Comcast.
On both occasions, Sky needed to turn to external counsel, enlisting Herbert Smith Freehills head of corporate Stephen Wilkinson. Wilkinson comments: ‘The legal function has shown its ability to change with the demands of the business and the industry in a way that many others have not. There are a number of individuals there who are leaders in their fields.’
Wilkinson highlighted Claire Canning, Sky’s director of legal for content and commercial, as one such lawyer. Likewise, Clare Mansell-Jones, senior legal counsel in business development, was described as ‘very thorough and astute’.
One of the key reasons for the legal team’s ability to adapt quickly comes through Sky’s ‘development through diversification’ initiative. In the past 18 months, roughly 25% of Sky’s lawyers have transitioned roles internally. These new roles allow lawyers to work in different areas or specialisms, either via secondments or by permanently moving.
Keeping up with its peers, Sky has recently established a new role of director of legal for operations and innovation. Last October, former director of legal for retail, customer operations, intellectual property and data protection, Hayley Stallard, took up the role. Since then, Stallard has been building out her team and has created an ‘innovation steering group’ – a cross-departmental group that aims to share strategies of best practice and innovation.
Sandry says: ‘As a team, we continually innovate to make sure we are working effectively, strategically and sustainably. We have a vision to be the best in-house legal team in the country, and we continue to be forward-looking and review how we work to achieve this.’
Sandry, and Sky as a whole, have also been committed to supporting the progression of women in their careers to ensure they take up senior positions. Sandry comments: ‘As a legal team we are proud to have a strong gender balance with over 50% of leadership roles held by women. We established the initiative to ensure there is a level playing field for all women to reach their potential.’
ZPG
General counsel: Ned Staple
Team size: Five
Major law firms used: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Travers Smith
Over the last three years, ZPG’s legal team has been at the centre of a transformation in the company’s activities. Since it floated on the London Stock Exchange as Zoopla in 2014, the company has increased its revenues three-fold and moved beyond its property listing origins by acquiring a number of businesses, including price comparison website uSwitch, financial services comparison website money.co.uk, property market research and data company Hometrack and Netherlands-based data analytics company Calcasa. In the last 12 months alone there have been five transactions, including complex competition components.
‘Our entire business has changed in a very short period,’ says ZPG GC and company secretary Ned Staple. ‘As a result, the type of work required by the legal team has changed with it. We now cover a much broader range of sectors, including energy, communications and financial services, which introduces a completely different set of regulatory and compliance requirements for the team to deal with.’
Travers Smith partner Andrew Gillen represented ZPG on a number of deals and says its in-house legal team is among the finest he has worked with. ‘For TMT lawyers the ability to adapt is key,’ says Gillen. ‘But the level of change they have managed to deal with is highly unusual. [Staple] has assembled a team of exceptional, young lawyers who have been critical to ZPG’s acquisition-led growth – both in terms of their first-rate transactional support and their post-deal integration and regulatory work.’
‘We offer a huge diversity of work in an entrepreneurial environment.’
The team is young: two of its members are still in their twenties and Staple, the most experienced lawyer at the company, would qualify as a rising star were he not already GC. The team’s longest-serving member behind Staple is legal counsel and assistant company secretary Angela Chow, who joined in 2014 after completing her training contract at Baker McKenzie. Amelia Guilfoyle left PwC in 2017 to take up the role of assistant GC following the departure of Katie Cosgrove (to become GC of online auto marketplace Carwow). South Africa-trained Emily Inglis and former Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer associate Michael Haynes joined in 2015 and 2017 respectively. Outside the legal team, head of regulation and compliance Richard Neudegg merits a mention for his work on a range of regulatory and policy issues facing digital comparison tools.
Although several of the companies within ZPG’s portfolio are large enough to require a dedicated legal team of their own, Staple prefers the compact legal, regulatory and compliance team (eight members in total) to sit within the group central executive, working closely with senior management across all brands. ‘A lot of tech-enabled businesses anticipate growth by building spare capacity into their teams, but I’d be nervous about people becoming remote, or worse, disengaged. We have taken some very high-quality people out of private practice and their commitment levels are excellent. One of the main opportunities we can offer them is a huge diversity of work in an entrepreneurial environment, as well as independence in how they structure their workload to try and ensure that they can consistently perform at their best.’
Telefónica UK
General counsel: Edward Smith
Team size: 29
Major law firms used: Baker McKenzie, Simmons & Simmons, Ashurst, DAC Beachcroft, DLA Piper, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith Freehills, Pinsent Masons, Shoosmiths
The 29-strong legal team at Telefónica UK has had a lot to contend with over the last 12 months, encompassing all areas of the law but particularly commercial and litigation.
According to GC Edward Smith, these disputes are frequently significant because ‘our litigation is regulatory litigation and it tends not to settle’.
His contentious team has been especially embattled in a dispute of major concern to the mobile sector: that between regulator Ofcom and rivals EE and Three. The dispute centred on Ofcom’s decision to set a cap of 37% on the amount of mobile spectrum any British company could own for its upcoming 5G auction. Three had argued for a lower 30% band to be applied, while EE wanted the cap to be removed entirely. Currently, BT-owned EE holds 42% of the UK mobile spectrum, with Three owning 15%, Vodafone 29% and Telefónica 14%.
The High Court had rejected EE’s and Three’s appeals against Ofcom’s decision in December 2017, but Three will be continuing its fight in the Court of Appeal in 2018. Smith, who wants the matter to be resolved quickly so that spectrum bidding can start, says: ‘My team has been working very closely with Ofcom. We want to see that decision stand.’ He cites senior legal counsel Sophie Service as a particularly strong performer in this area.
‘The high proportion of women in the team was all achieved without positive discrimination.’
In terms of non-contentious work, legal counsel Harry Robinson, and marketing and intellectual property head Melissa Hall have been instrumental in getting vital additions to Telefónica’s two million sponsorship agreements. Smith is specifically upbeat about a deal struck with Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) – the owners and operators of The O2 Arena in London – describing it as ‘a genuine win/win’. Telefónica entered into a new ten-year deal with AEG last year.
A further deal with events organiser Live Nation UK was also of note, with Smith saying: ‘Both deals are the backbone to our ability to provide priority tickets to customers.’
Smith is particularly proud of the number of women in his legal team, which he labels ‘extraordinary’. Out of 29 staff, 23 are female. ‘It was all achieved without any positive discrimination,’ Smith says. ‘We hire the best person for the job.’
Baker McKenzie partner Steve Holmes describes Telefónica’s team as ‘fast-paced and innovative’, and singles out corporate and commercial legal director Kate Copping for praise: ‘What sets Kate apart from her peers in the industry is her passion for creating high-quality teams, delivering targeted advice to the business and never shying away from challenge. Her knowledge of the UK telecoms market is second-to-none.’
Skyscanner
General counsel: Carolyn Jameson
Team size: Eight
Major law firms used: Bird & Bird, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang
Travel metasearch engine Skyscanner’s credentials as one of the UK’s most successful tech start-ups were underscored in November 2016 when it was acquired by Chinese online travel company Ctrip for £1.4bn. However, the company continues to operate autonomously and is still very much a part of Scotland’s vibrant tech scene.
Under the guidance of chief legal officer Carolyn Jameson, the company has also become something of a testing ground for new ways of handling legal work. Almost all matters are dealt with internally by a team of eight lawyers.
Corporate and M&A work is largely handled by Graeme Barron, director of legal and corporate development, and Martin Nolan, formerly GC of Edinburgh-based cyber security start-up Payfont, who joined the team in mid-2017. Intellectual property expertise is provided by Anoop Joshi, Andrew Farquhar and Singapore-based Robert Irvine, who is jointly responsible, along with Dabo Zhang, for covering the company’s operations in China. The Skyscanner team helps support parent-company Ctrip on matters outside China and will shortly recruit an Edinburgh-based lawyer dedicated to this role.
‘The lawyers are asked to figure out what we need as a business.’
Jameson has also looked to bring less traditional skills into the team. Joshi, who joined the team last year from Brodies, had previously worked as a software developer at CodeBase, the UK’s largest technology incubator, and as head of product and partnerships at cashflow forecasting app Float. ‘Finding a lawyer with that background is a godsend,’ says Jameson. ‘Matching those skills with commercial nous really sets [Joshi] apart.’
Further coding experience comes from Craig McIntyre, who completed his training contract with Skyscanner a year ago. ‘The business loves [McIntyre],’ adds Jameson. ‘He brings youth and enthusiasm to the projects he works on and is always asking how things can be done differently. It has been a very good advert for training lawyers in-house.’ The team has since taken on its second trainee, Flaviana Preston, whom Jameson describes as ‘a very bright, high-quality candidate, who is already developing into an excellent in-house lawyer’.
While each member of the team brings a specific technical skill to the business, all are expected to inform Skyscanner’s wider commercial strategy. ‘This is not a back-seat support function’, says Jameson. ‘A lot of the work we do, especially on the M&A side of things, is helping the business find opportunities and identify targets. The lawyers are often asked to help figure out what we need as a business and how various acquisitions might take us toward that goal. It’s an unusual structure, but the business is aware that we have some outstanding talents in this team.’
Uber
General counsel: Matthew Wilson, Tony West (in US)
Team size: 40
Major law firms used: Hogan Lovells, Herbert Smith Freehills, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
One day it is a ride-hailing service, the next a food delivery company. Soon it could be dealing with flying cars. When you work for the in-house legal team at Uber, anything can come through the door. This is why the company’s associate GC for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Matthew Wilson, cites the attitude and ability of every one of his 40-lawyer team, covering 45 countries in the region, to roll their sleeves up as the legal function’s key asset.
‘While Uber has revolutionised the way people move in cities around the world, it’s equally true that we made mistakes along the way. The work our team does is helping to continue to change the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of the cities in which we operate,’ he summates.
Uber has grown to revenues in excess of $7bn but has come in for a bumpy ride in various regions as the service does not always fit with existing laws and regulations. The most high-profile example of this came when Transport for London said it would not renew Uber’s private-hire operator licence in September last year, citing public safety and security implications. Uber is appealing the decision, in a case set for June, while another battle over the employment classification of Uber drivers is headed for the Court of Appeal in October. Wilson points to both cases as highlight work, led by UK legal director Helen Hayes and supported by the entire team, including employment counsel Jonathan Ollivent.
‘Everyone in the team is handling something material.’
He also lauds litigation wins in South Africa and France over the classification of drivers. In France, a change to licence types also affected tens of thousands of drivers, but Wilson says the company managed that transition in a successful and effective way: Western and Southern Europe legal director Riccardo Falconi and employment legal director Jean-Baptiste Chavialle are noted for their work on the French issues, and Robert Kayihura, Middle East and Africa legal director, for the South Africa win. Other stand-out matters the team has been involved in include the launch of its food-delivery arm, Uber Eats, in the summer of 2016, and working with teams in San Francisco to close the merger with the ride-hailing business of Russia’s largest technology company, Yandex, effectively creating a $3bn joint venture.
Wilson comments: ‘Everyone in the team is handling something that’s either material or potentially existential to a country or a region, which is really unique among legal teams. Some of the material issues that we handle maybe happen once or twice a year in other teams I’ve been in, but here it’s across the team every single day. That’s challenging, but it’s also hugely exciting and very energising.’
The team has introduced technological initiatives, such as self-service contracts that the business teams can generate contracts from, as well as the use of Google Docs, allowing for faster-paced document creation and review, which most of Uber’s external counsel now use as well. Otherwise, Uber is headed for a likely initial public offering. ‘If and when it happens, that’s going to be a lot of work for everyone around the globe, especially the legal team.’
Wilson and his team draw plaudits for having an in-depth understanding of the broader business and looking at problems in different ways. Hogan Lovells partner Charles Brasted comments: ‘The most notable feature of their work is that there is no such thing as business as usual. They have to be on top of their game all the time. The Uber business obviously has had a challenging time, but this shows the value of a legal team that is trusted by the business and guides it through difficult times.’
Vodafone
General counsel: Rosemary Martin
Team size: 500
Major law firms used: Slaughter and May, Linklaters, Hogan Lovells, Norton Rose Fulbright, Osborne Clarke, Squire Patton Boggs, Wiggin
Led by one of the most respected GCs in the business, Rosemary Martin, the Vodafone legal team received a huge number of nominations for the 2018 GC Powerlist, with both private practice and corporate counsel offering support.
Martin’s 500-strong legal team sprawls the globe and she highlights the importance of her regional divisions. In South Africa, Vodafone’s legal team has been involved in a major corporate mandate, selling a 5.2% stake in local mobile network operator Vodacom. Closer to home, significant matters include managing a network-sharing transaction with rival O2 – Project Beacon.
Martin says: ‘We are sharing a network. From a technical and legal point of view, it’s difficult. There are competition issues – you have got to make sure you don’t fall foul of the Competition and Markets Authority. That was probably one of the biggest transactions that the UK legal team did.’
Vodafone is another trailblazer of the legal operations profession, with head of legal operations Steven Jebb occupying the role full-time since May 2017. He had previously held a number of different roles for Vodafone, including head of legal for technology and outsourcing, and head of enterprise legal for northern Europe.
Martin says that Jebb and his team of two are charged with overseeing technological advancement at the company. Amy McConnell, another legal operations professional at Vodafone, has gone about reforming the way data is recorded. Prior to the last two years, little data was recorded internally. Since then, a range of metrics, such as the number of active deals and the number of disputes Vodafone is engaged in, have been indexed, resulting in budget savings of between 10% and 15% a year.
Legal director Kerry Phillip says of Martin: ‘She does a wonderful job for diversity and making law firms take note. She is a huge fan of tech and what it can do to improve the life of an in-house lawyer. She’s very bold in how we should transform ourselves. She’s a great representative on the board and she’s very well accepted as the GC sounding board.’
Accenture
General counsel: Derek Simpson, Chad Jerdee (in US)
Team size: 67 (UK)
Major law firms used: Fieldfisher, Baker McKenzie, Allen & Overy
The in-house legal function at professional services giant Accenture prides itself on embracing innovation and emulating the wider company’s global structure. Bucking the trend of many in-house legal departments, its structure is arranged mainly along specialist lines. The function is split into three divisions: sales and delivery; CORE (compliance, offerings, regulatory and entities); and litigation. The exception is the contracting teams, who are divided geographically based on their target market.
Derek Simpson, UK and Ireland complex contracting lead, says: ‘There’s a group of people in the UK who support our UK and Ireland business, but we’re very much part of a global team. Our global functions are led out of a number of geographies and our London team is very much part of that matrix. It’s not unusual for someone based in Singapore to run a global team.’
Aside from GDPR, a commonly-cited time-sink for many in-house lawyers, Accenture’s team has been focused on bringing itself and its clients into what Simpson calls ‘the new digital’. According to Simpson, many major IT contracts historically created by outside advisers to the industry are not ‘fit for purpose’ in terms of giving clients access to new technologies. The legal team sees itself ‘educating people’ on that front, Simpson says.
‘The Accenture in-house team is a global team full of people who like to learn.’
Accenture itself is also looking to keep up with the times, developing a new platform to give its lawyers clearer access to its database of contracts. Simpson says the new system enables the team to make sure the wider business is making informed decisions.
Outside of contracting, a star performer is Christina Demetriades, Accenture’s deputy GC for sales and delivery. After joining four years ago as an associate GC, Demetriades has risen quickly through the ranks to become deputy GC, managing a client-facing team of 1,500 people.
Baker McKenzie TMT partner Steve Holmes comments: ‘Christina has immersed herself in not only the legal team but also the business, where she is a key contributor to the company’s digital strategy. Her passion for leveraging innovation to deliver pragmatic, business-focused solutions, not just advice, sets her apart from her peers in her own industry and beyond.’
Simpson concludes: ‘The Accenture in-house team is a global team full of people who like to learn, and who will come up against a challenge and run with it. We are always willing to make changes. We think in an innovative way and we are not afraid to try something new if it gets us the best result.’