Legal Business

In-house: Rolls-Royce’s head of legal Gregory takes GC role

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In-house Rolls-Royce
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Rolls-Royce has appointed head of legal and commercial Mark Gregory as general counsel (GC), following the departure of Robert Webb QC who is to re-join Brick Court Chambers in January.

Gregory, who joined the British engineering heavyweight in 2005, held the deputy GC role prior to the departure of his predecessor head of legal and company secretary Nigel Goldsworthy. The role had been split in two, with Pamela Coles appointed as company secretary in October 2014 after joining from Centrica.

Webb who served as GC of Rolls Royce, as well as head of risk since January 2012, stepped down last month and will re-join Brick Court Chambers as an arbitrator, predominantly in the aviation field. Between 1998 and 2009, he held the role of GC at British Airways with responsibility for legal, government and industry affairs, safety, security, risk management, community relations and the environmental departments.

Ongoing instructions at Rolls-Royce include an SFO probe into alleged bribes paid in Asia, for which the company has turned to Slaughter and May to lead its defence, with litigation partners Richard Swallow and Jonathan Clark called in to beef up its defence.

The SFO is under pressure to get a successful prosecution against the aerospace giant, after securing funding worth millions of pounds in January 2014 to ramp up its investigation into Rolls-Royce.

Slaughters will be supported by Debevoise & Plimpton, which was instructed to defend the aerospace company when a whistleblower reported allegations of bribery in China and Indonesia in 2012. Lord Gold, a conservative peer and former senior partner at Herbert Smith Freehills, was also brought in to lead an internal review into the company’s compliance procedures.

kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk 

Legal Business

Slaughters parachutes in to defend Rolls-Royce in SFO probe

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Litigation Rolls-RoyceSlaughter and May
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Rolls-Royce has hired Slaughter and May to lead its defence as it faces an SFO probe into alleged bribes paid in Asia.

The agency is under pressure to get a successful prosecution against the aerospace giant, after securing funding worth millions of pounds in January 2014 to ramp up its investigation into Rolls-Royce.

Rolls Royce has now hired Slaughters litigation partners Richard Swallow and Jonathan Clark to beef up its defence.

Swallow, who defended GlaxoSmithKline in corruption investigations by the SFO and US authorities over alleged kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein’s regime during the United Nation’s oil-for-food program in Iraq, will lead the defence.

Slaughters will be supported by Debevoise & Plimpton, which were instructed to defend the aerospace company when a whistleblower reported allegations of bribery in China and Indonesia in 2012. Lord Gold, a conservative peer and former senior partner at Herbert Smith Freehills, was also brought in to lead an internal review into the company’s compliance procedures.

The new instruction is the latest in a long pipeline of high-profile UK fraud work for Slaughters. The UK SFO this week dropped its case against the firm’s client Olympus after charging it with making false and misleading financial statements just yesterday, and the Magic Circle firm also acted for the SFO in settling a £300m claim for botching an investigation into property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz down to £1.5m. 

tom.moore@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Risk profile: Rolls Royce appoints new compliance chief from IMI

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In-house Rolls-Royce
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Less than a year after appointing Mark Serfozo as director of risk from defence, security and aerospace giant BAE Systems, Rolls Royce has further bolstered its senior internal risk and compliance capability with the hire of IMI’s Jo Morgan as chief compliance counsel.

Morgan, a former Pinsent Masons lawyer who is currently the chief compliance officer of London-listed engineering company IMI, joins shortly after the Serious Fraud Office confirmed in December it had opened a criminal investigation into allegations of bribery and corruption at Rolls Royce, which launched its own investigation.

She leaves IMI after 14 years, having joined the company in 2000 as assistant company secretary before being appointed as deputy general counsel four years later.

Having been made up to chief compliance officer in 2009, Morgan, who will now report to Serfozo, notably led a major ethics and compliance programme, known as The IMI Way.

Her move comes nine months after Serfozo joined Rolls Royce as director of risk after nearly 20 years at BAE Systems, where he was compliance and regulation chief counsel and part of the efforts spearheaded by BAE general counsel Philip Bramwell to beef up that function.

John Rishton, Rolls-Royce chief executive, said last December: ‘I want to make it crystal clear that neither I nor the board will tolerate improper business conduct of any sort and will take all necessary action to ensure compliance.’

The move comes as a number of corporates bolster their compliance and litigation capability, including making senior private practice hires such as the appointment of Clifford Chance (CC) partner Daniela Weber-Rey as chief governance officer and deputy global head compliance in Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt office, announced last April.

Weber-Rey, who was a long-serving corporate partner at CC, joined Europe’s biggest bank by assets last June. Reporting to its management board and group executive committee member Stephan Leithner and serving as deputy to outgoing compliance chief Andrew Procter, her role involves overseeing corporate governance globally and acting as adviser to the management board on the governance structures and processes of the bank.

Similarly, it emerged last August that Berwin Leighton Paisner financial services partner Nick Kynoch joined Barclays Investment Bank as the head of regulatory compliance for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Risky business: BAE’s compliance head to direct risk at Rolls Royce as Lord Gold’s monitor role comes to an end

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Strategic recruitment Rolls-Royce
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BAE Systems compliance and regulation chief counsel Mark Serfozo has moved to Rolls-Royce as director of risk after nearly 20 years at the defence, security and aerospace giant in a move said by BAE’s high profile general counsel Philip Bramwell to be ‘a good career move’.

Serfozo was appointed to head compliance in 2007 as part of Bramwell’s move to beef up that function shortly after his arrival at BAE and during the height of long running investigations by the Serious Fraud Office into the al-Yamamah arms deal.Since then, the compliance function at BAE has quadrupled to around 100 staff and the legal team doubled to 250, while the company’s litigation costs have dropped by 80%.

Serfozo will be replaced by BAE’s global head of dispute resolution Joanna Talbot, who he has worked closely with to identify trends that give rise to disputes in order to troubleshoot at an early stage.

During his time at BAE, Serfozo and his team put together training packages to educate BAE’s 106,000 employees on a new principles-based compliance policy, under which they must take responsibility for compliance and are required to make an informed judgment on issues such as the receipts of gifts.

Rolls-Royce engines power major planes from Concorde to Airbus and it operates in all major defence aircraft sectors. The company has a good safety record but in June this year the Australian Transport Safety bureau found the mid-air failure of one of its Trent 900 engines was responsible for the emergency landing of a Qantas Airbus A380 flying over Batam Island in Indonesia in 2010.

Bramwell said: ‘We were of course sad to lose Mark as a colleague, but he looks to be making a good career move into another fascinating industry, which is one of the great opportunities afforded by an in-house career.

‘It’s not all bad news for a legal department when lawyers move on, provided that you have established appropriate succession plans. We have developed a very strong bench within the BAE Systems legal team and Joanna Talbot, formerly our global head of dispute resolution, has now taken on the compliance and regulation role after working through a very orderly period of transition alongside Mark.’

The move comes as BAE enters a new chapter heralded by the end of the three-year appointment of Lord Gold as BAE corporate monitor. Lord Gold – formerly senior partner at legacy Herbert Smith – was appointed as part of the 2010, £286m agreement negotiated by Bramwell with the SFO, under which he would review the effectiveness of the company’s internal controls, record keeping and existing or new policies and procedures. His appointment comes to an end next month.

francesca.fanshawe@legalease.co.uk