Big deals – meet the GCs running the headline deals

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Big deals – meet the GCs running the headline deals

The global M&A market is booming. Bill Mordan, general counsel at FTSE 100 drug-maker Shire, would know. Shire’s board recently recommended a £46bn takeover offer from rival Japanese pharma giant Takeda.

‘Money continues to be cheap to borrow and so it’s still easy to get funding from venture capital, as well as other speciality equity investments in new technologies,’ Mordan comments. ‘There’s a large quantum of assets out there available for acquisition.’ Continue reading “Big deals – meet the GCs running the headline deals”

Going places: focus on Michelin

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Going places: focus on Michelin

Leading a global legal team is a complex role and many general counsel (GCs) could be forgiven for spending all their energy just trying to get the job done. Not so at Michelin. Despite overseeing a legal community of 200 members, comprising lawyers, patent engineers, paralegals and admin staff, spread across 20 countries, group GC Benoit Balmary wanted the team to develop a defined strategy of its own alongside supporting Michelin’s goals.

‘We have the global management team, the management team of the legal function worldwide, which I chair. This is composed of all of the general counsel of the regional teams, and the heads of the biggest domain teams (IP and corporate), and the head of ethics. This team meets every semester and together we set the strategy of the legal department for the coming years,’ notes Balmary. The mission of the legal department, as defined by our management team, is ‘to protect the group against legal risks and to facilitate its business objectives in an efficient, innovative and sustainable way’. Continue reading “Going places: focus on Michelin”

Disruptive tech: Riding Schumpeter’s gale

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Disruptive tech: Riding Schumpeter’s gale

Storyteller. Ninja. Scrum Master. Brand Champion. Evangelist. The modern commercial world has created many new genres of work, but sometimes it is hard to know what they mean. As the London School of Economics’ headline-grabbing anthropologist David Graeber once wrote: ‘It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.’

But, argues Nathan Furr, professor of strategy and innovation at INSEAD in Paris, the phenomenon of ‘bullshit jobs’, as they are increasingly derided in popular culture, is not a simple tale of corporate indulgence, but one of confusion and insecurity afflicting some of the world’s most established businesses. ‘A lot of chief executives are wrestling with a very basic question: what do we do? It just isn’t that obvious what many established businesses’ core activities are anymore. The knock-on effect of this uncertainty is a large amount of internal reorganisation and new roles to “deliver end-to-end customer journeys” and “communicate across silos”. The senior executives I work with are wrestling with the question of how they can respond to the challenge of disruption and continue working profitably.’ Continue reading “Disruptive tech: Riding Schumpeter’s gale”

Client profile: Martin Cook, Funding Circle

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Client profile: Martin Cook, Funding Circle

The London office of peer-to-peer lender Funding Circle is exactly what you would expect from one of the UK’s largest and most high-profile fintech businesses.

Open-plan, has meeting rooms with names like ‘Borough Market’, and staff play table tennis as you walk into reception. It feels like a fun place to work. Continue reading “Client profile: Martin Cook, Funding Circle”

Sole-adviser relationships: Commitment issues

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Sole-adviser relationships: Commitment issues

Commitment. Marriage. Honeymoon. Divorce. Conversations about single-supplier legal advisory mandates are rife with relationship-strewn analogies.

While no two arrangements are the same, most begin with a commitment from a company and its in-house legal team to reduce external legal spend and get a better handle on its multitude of legal connections. Continue reading “Sole-adviser relationships: Commitment issues”

Green investment – The colour of money

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Green investment – The colour of money

Pressure for business to ‘go green’ has been building steadily for 20 years. What started as a minority concern has steadily moved up the corporate agenda, as governments impose incentives and penalties to support green policies, while an increasingly informed consumer base votes with their wallets.

Yet one sector slow to rise to the challenge has been finance and financial services, for which the ordinary barriers to green thinking are more pronounced. Continue reading “Green investment – The colour of money”

Aviation focus: Winds of change

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Aviation focus: Winds of change

Uncertainty seems to be the only thing lawyers working in Europe’s aviation sector can count on these days.

The recent collapse of two established major European airlines demonstrated the volatility facing many sections of the industry, with UK-headquartered Monarch Airlines and Air Berlin becoming the latest casualties of turbulence. Continue reading “Aviation focus: Winds of change”

Client profile: Richard Price, Anglo American

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Client profile: Richard Price, Anglo American

Shortly before Richard Price went in-house as group general counsel (GC) and company secretary at Anglo American, the legal team’s headcount was cut in half. This was not coupled with a reduced workload, however. Expectations remained the same.

Quite a platform for Price, a former external adviser to the company as Shearman & Sterling’s co-head of mining and metals, to find his feet in-house after more than 20 years in private practice. Continue reading “Client profile: Richard Price, Anglo American”

Virtual Fear and Loathing – Can GCs get law firms to collaborate on tech?

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Virtual Fear and Loathing – Can GCs get law firms to collaborate on tech?

Clichés abound over the stereotypical contrast between stuffy lawyers and progressive tech start-up gurus. Clearly law firms – whose liberal and often misplaced use of the term ‘innovation’ often adds fuel to the fire – have plenty of work to do. At the same time, some clients are far more insistent on innovation from their external advisers than others.

To what extent is this true? Are clients really driving a technological shake-out in the procurement of legal services? As Stuart Whittle, business services director at Weightmans, says: ‘The appetite varies massively among clients. Some want a solution on a stick while others are willing to invest time in tech and work with start-ups. They are all doing their own things and they are subjected to all kinds of pressures.’ Continue reading “Virtual Fear and Loathing – Can GCs get law firms to collaborate on tech?”

Gamification – the thoroughly modern way to redesign legal services

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Gamification – the thoroughly modern way to redesign legal services

You may not have heard the term ‘gamification’, but the chances are you have experienced a form of it.

Perhaps you’re an executive in a FTSE 500 company with a generous bonus triggered when your performance meets certain conditions. You could be a corporate client, flicking through the ranked lawyers in The Legal 500, preparing to draw up a shortlist for your next deal. In each case, you would be responding to an element of gameplay dynamics, subtly influencing your judgement, or motivating particular choices. Continue reading “Gamification – the thoroughly modern way to redesign legal services”