Significant matters – Summer 2019

Post Office refreshes panel with two-tier system

Pinsent Masons and Linklaters are among six law firms that have won spots on the Post Office’s new two-tier legal panel, worth £39m. Pinsents, Linklaters and Norton Rose Fulbright have been appointed to lot one, covering complex strategic work across the company, which is wholly owned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and provides a broad spectrum of services, spanning from postal, to broadband, to financial and bill payments. Pinsents has also been assigned to the second lot, joining Womble Bond Dickinson, DAC Beachcroft and Ashfords for general legal services and day-to-day legal advice. The panel is set to run for a four-year term initially, with a possible two-year extension.

Nine new firms sign up to Mindful Business Charter

shutterstock_1236220336Nine new law firms have signed up to the Mindful Business Charter six months after the initiative launched. Capsticks, CMS, DWF, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Herbert Smith Freehills, Michelmores, Osborne Clarke, Stone King and Weightmans have joined Ashurst, Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance, Eversheds Sutherland, Hogan Lovells and Simmons & Simmons to reach 17 law firms that have pledged their support. Barclays, Pinsent Masons and Addleshaw Goddard set up the initiative which is seeking to reduce stress among in-house and external lawyers. Client-side support for the charter includes inaugural signatories Lloyds and NatWest. Barclays has considerable leverage, with adoption of the charter an integral agenda item at quarterly relationship review meetings with its panel firms. Managing director Philip Aiken said: ‘This goes to show that many organisations want to find ways in which they can support their colleagues in pursuing careers which are sustainable for the long term.’.

Three firms lose out after Transport for London panel review

GoingUndergroundFreshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Lewis Silkin and Simmons & Simmons have lost their places on an expanded Transport for London legal panel in its first review since 2012. A total of 15 firms have been appointed across eight areas – including major commercial as well as employment and industrial relations – with Addleshaw Goddard, Burges Salmon, DLA Piper, Stephenson Harwood, Pinsent Masons, Womble Bond Dickinson and BDB Pitmans securing spots. Ashurst, Eversheds Sutherland, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Dentons, Herbert Smith Freehills, K&L Gates, Trowers & Hamlins and Gowling WLG will continue on the panel, which will run for four years from 1 June with the option to extend for two more. The previous panel arrangement consisted of 11 external advisers across six lots, and was extended by two years in 2016.

Lloyds to reassess advisers as current panel runs course

Lloyds-Banking-Group

Lloyds Banking Group is reviewing its panel of eight law firms under the watch of group GC Kate Cheetham. Addleshaw Goddard, Allen & Overy, Ashurst, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang, Eversheds Sutherland, Herbert Smith Freehills, Hogan Lovells and Linklaters face a ‘rigorous and competitive tender process’, according to a spokesperson for the bank. The panel is due for renewal this year but no decisions will be made until the current panel runs its course in October. Lloyds last reviewed its UK panel in 2016, when DLA Piper and Norton Rose Fulbright lost their places as it reduced its UK legal roster from ten to eight firms. ‘Firms are getting better at thinking about how they are going to provide services differently going forward,’ said Cheetham in this year’s GC Powerlist. ‘We use firms and alternative legal service providers to run the document collation and search functionality for litigation. We also use different types of firms for client documents and large data sets.’

BAML European GC Hussein steps down
to join EY

GC Powerlist regular Sajid Hussein, the long-serving EMEA general counsel at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), has stepped down after 14 years to join Big Four accounting firm EY. Hussein takes up his position as a partner and GC for Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa at EY at the end of July and replaces Herve Labaude, who is retiring after 25 years. Ike Osaki, who is GC Latin America, replaces Hussein at BAML and will relocate from New York to London. From London, Hussein oversaw a 150-strong legal team at BAML supporting the firm’s global corporate and investment banking division and global markets. After working as an associate at Allen & Overy, he spent four years as a director at Deutsche Bank before moving to BAML as associate GC in 2005, retaining his position after the bank’s $50bn acquisition of Merrill Lynch at the height of the financial crisis..

Capita reviews legal panel amid business overhaul

Capita has kick-started its panel review amid an overhaul of its strategy and operating model. Addleshaw Goddard, DWF, Eversheds Sutherland, Linklaters and Pinsent Masons are among the outsourcing company’s preferred advisers. In this year’s GC Powerlist, chief general counsel Claire Chapman said she would be carrying out a review this year. She manages a legal team of 35 lawyers that did not exist when she joined the company in the middle of last year as its first GC. Capita has faced criticism following a tumultuous few years: chief executive Jon Lewis announced a profit warning and various other measures in early 2018 following an assessment of the company he made after taking over a couple of months previously. It reported a £513m loss for the 2017 financial year.

Moves that matter

Newstead,-Jennifer

  • Facebook has recruited Jennifer Newstead (pictured above), a legal adviser to the US State Department, to replace incumbent GC Colin Stretch who announced that he was leaving last July. Stretch, who was made vice president and GC of Facebook in 2013, will stay on at the company throughout the summer to assist in the transition period. Newstead was appointed a legal adviser to the State Department by President Donald Trump and was previously a partner at Davis, Polk & Wardwell.
  • WorldRemit GC Sam Ross has left the online money transfer service for London-based financial crime business ComplyAdvantage. Ross, who featured in the GC Powerlist 2019, was WorldRemit’s first in-house lawyer when he joined in 2016 and built up the in-house legal team to seven people.
  • Royal Mail has filled the position of former GC Maaike de Bie who has moved to easyJet, hiring in-house veteran Mark Amsden as its group GC and chief risk and governance officer. Amsden was group GC and company secretary for Morrisons between 2013 and 2017, before a brief stint last year as interim company secretary at Yorkshire Water.
  • Takeaway-ordering app Deliveroo has named its new legal head after former legal chief Rob Miller left in January. Chantelle Zemba has been promoted from former corporate and compliance chief to GC. The former Norton Rose Fulbright senior associate joined Deliveroo on a five-month secondment in late 2016, before staying on for good. She will report into Thea Rogers, chief communications, policy and legal officer.
  • Former Latham & Watkins partner Andrew Macklin has joined financial services provider Apex Group as GC. Apex said Macklin’s appointment supports its plans to branch out beyond asset management into institutional provider services. Macklin was most recently interim head of legal at Monzo Bank, having started his career as an associate at Slaughter and May before making partner at US firm White & Case.
  • Thomas Cook GC Alice Marsden is leaving to become group GC at FTSE 100 housebuilding company Taylor Wimpey from November. She replaces James Jordan, who is stepping down as group legal director after 17 years, while Thomas Cook’s former head of legal continental Europe, Rainer Altfuldisch, is acting as interim GC at the travel company. Marsden spent five years at Thomas Cook before becoming GC in 2016. She was previously an associate at Latham & Watkins.