Associated British Foods
Described as ‘disarmingly charming, astute and always gets the commercial and legal picture’, Paul Lister runs a tight team of 40 lawyers spread across 47 countries worldwide, involved in a wide range of activities from retail to manufacturing. Associated British Foods’ brands include Primark, Twinings, Ovaltine, British Sugar, AB Mauri, Tip Top and Mazola.
John Lewis Partnership
Margaret Casely–Hayford wins praise from private practitioners for her evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, thinking. During her six years at the partnership, she introduced a more cost-efficient legal services model and effective governance and compliance framework for the business.
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Westfield Shoppingtowns
Leon Shelley’s first move out of private practice in 2000 as a banker at UBS Warburg was not well timed: he left just as the tech bubble burst. He returned to private practice before joining Westfield Shoppingtowns in 2005 as its first UK general counsel.
Ladbrokes
When Jonathan Adelman joined Ladbrokes in 2008, there was no internal legal team and a high external spend. In just four years, he transformed the gaming company’s in-house offering. The previous legal panel that was saturated with around 100 firms now has less than a dozen, reducing the typical spend of £8m-10m down to £4m-6m. He is particularly proud of his in-house team of six that he built from scratch.
Greggs
Jonathan Jowett’s most recent victory against the government-imposed ‘pasty-tax’, which raised Greggs’ share price by 9%, turned into a public remonstration generating over 500,000 petition signatures and protests in Whitehall.
Capital Shopping Centres
Hugh Ford has a small in-house team at Capital Shopping Centres – just one other lawyer and a secondee. But this means he loves the variety of his job, the ‘never quite knowing what issue is going to come across your desk next’.
Jones Lang LaSalle
Nicolas Taylor has been general counsel at Jones Lang LaSalle for eight years and manages a team of 20 lawyers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and praises the ‘fantastic team culture’ at the real estate services company.
Grosvenor
Ulrike Schwarz-Runer joined Grosvenor as general counsel in 2010 and is currently overseeing some major changes within her legal department, particularly mooting the possibility of having a formal law firm panel.
The Crown Estate
The Crown Estate is a UK property business, governed by an Act of Parliament, that funnels all of its profits into HM Treasury, totalling around £2bn over the past ten years. Vivienne King has been in the top legal job at The Crown Estate since 2007.
Legal & General Property
Katherine Laurenson is a self-confessed ‘deal junkie’ and has carved out a particular niche advising on all aspects of fund structuring for Legal & General Property. It currently has over £10bn of assets under management, making it one of the UK’s largest institutional property fund managers.
