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.
She runs a huge team that is the equivalent of a law firm on its own, with 400 lawyers covering 24 countries. As such her team will deal with the vast majority of issues in-house. ‘We do use internal legal resources a lot but there are occasions when we do need external legal advice in areas of specialist knowledge that we haven’t got or where we need more manpower and more brains and we’ll go outside for that,’ she says.
Law firms used: DAC Beachcroft, DLA Piper, Field Fisher Waterhouse, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells, Linklaters, Olswang, Slaughter and May, Wragge & Co
2010-present: Group general counsel and company secretary, Vodafone
1997–2008: Group general counsel and company secretary, Reuters
1984-97: Partner, Rowe & Maw (now Mayer Brown)