High profile general counsel and chief legal officers from companies including GSK, Anglo American, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and VodafoneThree are among more than 100 senior in-house leaders winning spots on the latest UK GC Powerlist.
The 2026 Legal 500 UK GC Powerlist officially launched yesterday, with a reception hosted by Kennedys in London’s Old Bailey.
Well-known names on the roster include Bob Hoyt, CLO at HSBC, outgoing Lloyds Banking Group CLO Kate Cheetham, James Ford at GSK, Rolls Royce CLO Maria Varsellona, Arm’s Spencer Collins and BT Group GC Sabine Chalmers, who is set to be replaced by former Rolls Royce lawyer Mark Gregory when she retires in January.
The line-up also includes a number of fintech GCs including Revolut’s Tom Hambrett, Starling’s Monica Risam, Monzo’s Stephanie Pagni and Wise’s Jessica Winter.
Both Hambrett and Risam’s inclusion comes after they overhauled engagement with external counsel, with Risam introducing Starling’s first ever external law firm panel, while Hambrett launched ‘Revolut Partners’ earlier this year, a new external legal engagement process.
Overall, there are 136 lawyers on the Powerlist from 126 companies. Everyone making the grade has been chosen for their significant contributions to their company or industry sector over the last year through nominations by peers, the private practice partners they instruct and research by the Legal 500 GC Powerlist team.
Many leading insurance company GCs are also included in the line-up this year, including GCs at Allianz UK, Aviva, CNA Hardy, Resolution Life, Howden and Zurich Insurance.
Joanne Jolly, CLO at Howden, has played a key role supporting the insurer’s growth and led the legal team through more than 65 M&A transactions across 14 jurisdictions over the last year, as well as guiding Howden’s entry into the US retail broking market, which scaled to over 1,000 employees within 12 months.
The in-house market has seen plenty of movement in 2026, with a number of FTSE 100 companies seeing changes to their legal heads, meaning this year’s list features a host of new names.
Svetlana Walker, who took over from Clare Wardle at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, Maria Alvarez-Scott, who succeeded Geoffrey Timms at Legal & General, and Prakash Kakkad, Unilever’s new legal chief all made first-time appearances in the Powerlist.
Since being made CLO, Kakkad and his legal team have been working on deals including the Unilever Foods and McCormick combination, while also making the company’s operating model more efficient through AI.
Sixteen lawyers have entered the Powerlist as rising stars, including Harina Chandhok, junior legal counsel at Bosch UK & Ireland who, in addition to handling commercial contracts, built an NDA and power of attorney generator, saving the legal team more than 250 hours in their first eight months of use.
The complete list includes 35 FTSE 100 companies and 83 women, meaning more than 60% of the list are female.
Other well-known legal heads on the 2026 Powerlist include PwC’s new global general counsel Alison Statham, International Consolidated Airlines Group GC Sarah Clements and Benedict Nwaeke, who recently picked up the GC of the year prize at the Legal Business awards for his work on the Soho House & Co’s take-private transaction.
