Kevin Santry
Regional Legal counsel, Africa and Middle East, Heineken
Santry is one of the more high-profile Rising Stars, having been heavily and visibly involved in Dutch brewer Heineken’s £7.8bn acquisition of Scottish & Newcastle in 2008.
Other more recent deals have included his integral role in Heineken’s acquisition of a controlling interest in five breweries in Nigeria from Sona Group, which will raise Heineken’s market share in the country to around 68%.
Santry, described as ‘a man of honesty and integrity’, has highly developed interpersonal skills with one nomination going as far as to say he ‘retains a private practice lawyer’s following that is not just dependent on him throwing out work and fees as scraps. He is a relational lawyer who knows the business’.
Kay Majid
Group Commercial Legal Director, Tesco
Majid has risen up through the ranks in one of the UK’s largest companies within a relatively short space of time. At a comparatively young age, Majid is responsible for a very large team of lawyers. One corporate and commercial partner at a top-20 UK firm says: ‘I am certain that will lead to a higher profile role in the future.’
After starting legal life at Linklaters in March 1999, Majid moved to The Royal Bank of Scotland as litigation counsel before joining Tesco in August 2008 as a senior counsel in the litigation, IP, data protection and marketing department.
She became group commercial legal director in May 2012 and is credited with a superb understanding and appreciation of the underlying law, allied to a very practical application of the commercial needs of her business, with one nomination claiming: ‘Majid’s absolute focus is on delivering what the business requires commercially.’
Lawyer, John Lewis Partnership
Although one of the most junior members of the Rising Stars list, Holt, who qualified in 2008, has had an integral role in the negotiation of some critically important sponsorship deals for both the Olympics, which saw John Lewis’ Westfield Stratford City outlet become a key retailer for games-related merchandise (a factor which it credited for driving up its half-year profits), and for the Commonwealth Games.
In addition to being a strong black-letter lawyer, Holt has had to work within the John Lewis Partnership constitution, ensuring that all agreements are not only legally compliant but live up to the exacting principles set by its founder.
One insider says: ‘She understands the business as a whole, works within the commercial strategy and meets those objectives.’
Verity Chase
Head of Commercial Contracts, Marks & Spencer
Recognised by team members and her internal stakeholders as the ‘number two’ in the in-house team, reporting to head of legal Robert Ivens, Chase is noted as bright, articulate, diligent, decisive and good fun.
Nominated for the Legal Business Rising Star In-house Counsel of the Year Award, Chase has, in addition to managing her own team, been instrumental in providing the legal framework to assist M&S with its international expansion plans. One external nomination goes as far as to say: ‘In very tight timeframes she has made the company’s strategic plan a reality.’
One of her strengths is keeping M&S’s stakeholders happy without over-compromising. An insider says: ‘Verity has the ability to command the respect of her clients. What’s intriguing is that her clients, including the board, seek out her advice and want her to be involved in the decision making – that doesn’t always happen. She is very firm, very persuasive, and she gives the stakeholders exactly what they are looking for.’
Chase is also given credit for her interpersonal skills, which means she is seen as an equal to all, whether that be a board director or a junior person in a business function, and – particularly important within this vast retail business – she can get on with everyone from a fashion buyer to ‘the bloke who is in charge of the lorries’.
General Counsel and Company Secretary, Iceland Foods
Although general counsel and company secretary, Burrell is identified as a Rising Star on the basis that she is the youngest company secretary and head of legal of the UK’s top-ten retailers by a long margin.
Qualified for only 13 years, Burrell has been company secretary of Iceland Foods since April 2011, and was also formerly company secretary of DBC Foodservice, which was owned by Iceland Foods directors but entered administration in 2012 after it failed to find a buyer.
Burrell started at Iceland in 2003 as a senior commercial solicitor before rapidly rising up the ranks.
She played a central role in Iceland’s hugely complex and high-profile £1.5bn management buyout in March 2012, a role which she is said to have performed ‘with no little aplomb’.
Since then she has grown her remit and increased her team to 15, and continues to play a significant part in driving the growth and continuing success of the business in the UK and in also expanding the business overseas.
Rachel Clarke
General Legal Counsel, B&Q
At multinational DIY retailer B&Q, Clarke is praised for her broad legal knowledge backed with sound practical experience; a questioning, enquiring mind; and strong communication skills together with excellent commercial awareness and judgement.
Flexible and able to work to tight deadlines, Clarke has the ability to prioritise and manage multiple matters concurrently whether they are – as one nomination says – ‘large, small or noisy’.
Clarke is also praised for her ability to engage and build relationships with internal customers in the business and she tackles tricky issues head on, finding practical solutions. However, she is not afraid to ‘call’ difficult situations and escalate them where appropriate.
‘She has the ability to manage expectations and meet unreasonable deadlines,’ says one nomination. ‘She is practical and approachable so that internal customers keep coming back.’
William Payne
Senior Commercial Counsel, William Grant & Sons
Payne stands out in no small part because he received high praise even from the general counsel of a rival drinks brand.
A former senior legal adviser at Heineken UK, Payne is described as ‘the safest pair of hands you could ever hope to have. He’s calm, considered and goes slightly below the radar’.
Payne trained with McGrigors in Edinburgh between 2003 and 2005, and went on a six-month secondment to KPMG, which he joined as a consultant in the executive remuneration team in the tax and people services division in 2005. He joined Heineken two years later and then William Grant & Sons in 2011 where he played a key role as the distiller acquired Irish whiskey brand Tullamore Dew and took control of liqueur brands Carolans, Frangelico and Irish Mist, selling them on to Gruppo Campari for €129m. In 2013, William Grant broke the £1bn sales mark for the second year in a row.