Richard Devereux
Labour law counsel
Intel
Intel has 300 lawyers worldwide and 41 in Europe. In the labour law division that Richard Devereux runs, there are six staff.
Martin Bowen – Dyson
Martin Bowen
Head of legal
Dyson
In his 14 years at Dyson, Martin Bowen has seen his legal department grow significantly. He now runs a team of 40 staff and has recently hired five new lawyers, including two commercial lawyers in the UK and one in Singapore.
Patrick Stewart – Manchester United Football Club
Patrick Stewart
Director of legal and business affairs
Manchester United Football Club
Patrick Stewart has presided over some big changes since he took over as director of legal at Manchester United Football Club, as the club has continued to become a global phenomenon: in the last 12 months alone, MUFC has opened an office in Hong Kong and listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Dan Fitz – BT
Dan Fitz
Group General Counsel
BT
Dan Fitz joined BT as group general counsel in 2010 and is described as ‘at the forefront of developments in the international markets for communications and media services’. He arrived at BT just after the company had gone through some tough times, including shedding 20% of its workforce in 2008 and 2009.
James Blendis – Everything Everywhere
James Blendis
General Counsel and Company Secretary
Everything Everywhere
James Blendis is used to high-profile work: he oversaw the game-changing merger between Orange and T-Mobile in 2010 and took part in the Leveson inquiry last year. ‘I was never a specialised telecoms guy – you have to learn on the job and technically you have to learn how the networks operate otherwise you’re not able to do your job properly,’ he says.
Robin Saphra – Colt Group
Robin Saphra
Group General Counsel,
Colt Group
Robin Saphra garnered plenty of attention last year after signing Baker & McKenzie as Colt Group’s principal adviser on a fixed annual contract worth £1m a year, cutting down his roster of external advisers from around 60 firms to just three. This has clearly reduced his legal spend, which currently stands at around €12m per year.
Robert Blok – Virgin
Robert Blok
Group legal director
Virgin
Robert Blok looks after the legal aspects of Virgin investments across a whole range of industry sectors and oversees the relationship between Virgin’s diverse businesses and the external law firms to make sure they use the best practice in every country.
Ed Smith – Telefónica UK
Ed Smith
General Counsel
Telefónica UK
Ed Smith certainly paid his dues before becoming GC at Telefónica UK in 2010: he has been with the company for 11 years. During that time, he has seen his company demerge from BT, rebrand into O2 and finally be acquired by Telefónica in 2005. So when he says, ‘I started absolutely at the ground floor’, he is not being too modest.
Maurice Woolf – Interoute
Maurice Woolf
Group General counsel
Interoute
Having practised in-house for telecoms companies since 1995 Maurice Woolf has, according to one telecoms lawyer, ‘long been at the heart of the UK communications industry’.
Stephen Lerner – Hutchison 3G UK
Stephen Lerner
General counsel and director of regulatory affairs
Hutchison 3G UK
Steven Lerner sees his role as an innovator. ‘3 is not afraid of challenging the status quo or taking risks so we expect our external firms to think in a more creative and challenging way,’ he says.
Paul van Straaten – Chief legal officer
Paul van Straaten
Chief legal officer
Lebara Group
Paul van Straaten loves to be in the middle of the action. Whether it’s high-profile disputes before the European Court of Justice, major M&A transactions or projects in developing countries, Lebara Group is never just ‘ticking over’, he says.
Rosemary Martin – Vodafone
Rosemary Martin
Group general counsel and company secretary
Vodafone
One of the most high profile and respected GCs around today, Rosemary Martin joined Vodafone after more than a decade at news agency Reuters.
Philip Davis – Cable & Wireless Worldwide
Philip Davis
General counsel and company secretary
Cable & Wireless Worldwide
Described by one telecoms expert as having done ‘a great job as GC at Cable & Wireless Worldwide in challenging times’, Philip Davis’ main task at CWW right now is to bring down group legal spend, which currently stands at around £1.2m a year.
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Colin Armstrong – Merlin Entertainments Group
Colin Armstrong
Group legal director and company secretary
Merlin Entertainments Group
In running Merlin Entertainments Group’s legal team single-handedly, Colin Armstrong supports the entire group on all legal matters while his company secretarial function provides strategic and operational advice. Merlin is now the second-largest visitor attraction operator after Disney. The company manages 60 sites across Europe and the US, including family favourites such as Alton Towers, Sea Life, Legoland, Madame Tussauds, The Dungeons, Heide Park in Germany and the London Eye.
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Adrian Morris – Tesco
Adrian Morris
Group general counsel
Tesco
Adrian Morris’ team is vast – 250 staff, including 200 lawyers – but a company the size of Tesco needs a strong roster of external law firms to support that in-house team.
Jonathan Jowett – Greggs
Jonathan Jowett
Company secretary and general counsel
Greggs
Jonathan Jowett’s most recent victory against the government-imposed ‘pasty-tax’, which raised Greggs’ share price by 9%, turned into a public remonstration generating over 500,000 petition signatures and protests in Whitehall.
Jonathan Adelman – Ladbrokes
Jonathan Adelman
General counsel and company secretary
Ladbrokes
When Jonathan Adelman joined Ladbrokes in 2008, there was no internal legal team and a high external spend. In just four years, he transformed the gaming company’s in-house offering. The previous legal panel that was saturated with around 100 firms now has less than a dozen, reducing the typical spend of £8m-10m down to £4m-6m. He is particularly proud of his in-house team of six that he built from scratch.
Leon Shelley – Westfield Shoppingtowns
Leon Shelley
European general counsel and company secretary
Westfield Shoppingtowns
Leon Shelley’s first move out of private practice in 2000 as a banker at UBS Warburg was not well timed: he left just as the tech bubble burst. He returned to private practice before joining Westfield Shoppingtowns in 2005 as its first UK general counsel.
Margaret Casely-Hayford – John Lewis Partnership
Margaret Casely–Hayford
Company secretary and director of legal services
John Lewis Partnership
Margaret Casely–Hayford wins praise from private practitioners for her evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, thinking. During her six years at the partnership, she introduced a more cost-efficient legal services model and effective governance and compliance framework for the business.
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Paul Lister – Associated British Foods
Paul Lister
Director of legal services and company secretary
Associated British Foods
Described as ‘disarmingly charming, astute and always gets the commercial and legal picture’, Paul Lister runs a tight team of 40 lawyers spread across 47 countries worldwide, involved in a wide range of activities from retail to manufacturing. Associated British Foods’ brands include Primark, Twinings, Ovaltine, British Sugar, AB Mauri, Tip Top and Mazola.