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.
‘We’ve got a big in-house team but I’ve seen other smaller in-house teams spending between £10m and £30m on external advisers so we think a big internal team is an efficient response,’ he says. The company policy is to keep as much stuff in-house as possible but Blendis will instruct preferred firms on major transactional work and litigation.
Law firms used: Bird & Bird, Cobbetts, DAC Beachcroft, Osborne Clarke, Slaughter and May, TLT, Ward Hadaway, Winckworth Sherwood
2010-present: General counsel and company secretary, Everything Everywhere
2004-10: Legal director and company secretary, T-Mobile
2002-04: Deputy general counsel, T-Mobile
1998-2002: Legal director, One2One