Editorial Board Profiles
- John Abramson
- Mirza Ahmad
- David Bale
- Sarah Booth
- Christopher Cash
- Anne M Coles
- Amanda Doyle
- Nick Folland
- John Forsyth
- Geraldine Gee
- Wayne Gibbard
- Hugh Gladman
- Simon Goldburn
- David Greaves
- Gareth John
- Carolyn Kirby
- Janice Leiper
- Stephen McNamara
- Stuart Morgan
- Mike Morris
- Ken Morrison
- Francis O'Neill
- Jeremy Ogden
- Jonathan Pearl
- Philip Ramsell
- Fiona Smith
- Chris Smyth
- Evelyn Sullivan
- Richard Tapp
- Geoff Wild
- Robert Wilson
- Suzanne Wise
John Abramson,
Regional Counsel, Central Europe and CIS, AIG
Regional counsel for AIG’s general insurance operations in the Central
Europe and CIS region. This comprises subsidiary companies and branch operations
in 13 countries. Before AIG, John was a litigator in the London office of the
New York law firm, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae where he specialised in
international insurance-related matters.
Dr Mirza Ahmad,
Corporate Director of Governance, Birmingham City Council
Mirza joined Birmingham City Council, in June 2000, as Chief Legal Officer of the largest local authority in the UK, and possibly Europe. He currently has corporate leadership of the Department of Governance (which includes over 800 staff dealing with Legal, Democratic, Regulatory and Information Management Services). He also became, in 2000, the first local government manager to obtain a ‘3 star – excellent rating’ under the Government’s Best Value regime for his Legal Department and is currently leading Birmingham’s multi-million Pounds Business Transformation Programme relating to Excellence in Information Management.
David Bale,
Consultant, Solicitor, Mediator
Worked in legal private practice in the City of London and Amsterdam before moving in-house, initially with Northern Engineering Industries plc and then Rolls-Royce plc. Twenty-four years broad international experience in senior in-house legal and commercial positions, latterly as Deputy General Counsel of Rolls-Royce plc. Now working as an independent consultant for business, the legal profession, and in the charitable sector.
Sarah Booth,
Associate, LBC Wise Counsel
Sarah has spent most of her career in-house, and has considerable management experience at an executive level in the design build and management of legal departments. After graduating from Edinburgh University, she trained with Dickson Minto WS and qualified as a solicitor in Scotland. She then joined Christian Salvesen PLC, the European logistics company and spent 10 years there, latterly leading the legal and corporate development team as Legal and Corporate Development Director.
In 2001 Sarah joined a newly formed management buyout team as General Counsel and Company Secretary of Damovo Group SA, a telecoms service company, and subsequently became General Counsel for Sodexo UK and Ireland, heading a team of 10 lawyers for the UK division of Sodexo Alliance SA, a global catering and support services business. She was until December 2008 General Counsel, Global Risk Management, at Christie’s, the world’s leading art business.
Christopher Cash,
Legal Business Consultant
Former Chief Legal Counsel, Solicitor & Company Secretary Kraft Foods with legal and business expertise in multinational food manufacturing and previous experience in pharamceuticals and computers.
Anne M Coles,
Managing Director, AMC Law
Anne has served as a senior executive, lawyer and manager with a number
of high profile public institutions and as Head of Legal Services and Legal
Adviser to the Law Society. She now manages her own law firm and legal consultancy.
Anne is a Solicitor Advocate, an accredited mediator and has a master’s
degree in advanced litigation.
Amanda Doyle,
Consultant, Solicitor
Amanda is the former Vice President Legal and Regulatory, Orange UK where she was responsible for a team of 63 people including lawyers, regulatory and government security specialist and support staff.
Nick Folland ,
Director of Corporate Affairs, Kingfisher plc
Nick Folland is Company Secretary and Director of Corporate Affairs of Kingfisher plc. His responsibilities include the Group’s legal affairs, the company secretariat, all corporate governance matters (including Group insurance and Health & Safety), Government relations and he leads Kingfisher Group’s CSR programme.
Nick was previously Company Secretary and Group Legal Director of Emap plc (2001-2007) and Company Secretary and Group Head of Legal at 365 Corporation plc. He trained with, and worked for, Linklaters & Paines in London, Hong Kong and Singapore.
John Forsyth,
Legal Manager, HBOS plc
In his current position with HBOS plc he is responsible for leading and
managing strategic corporate transactions and developing programmes to mitigate
legal risk. John has an LLM in Information Technology and Telecommunications
Law and is a regular speaker on IT and Intellectual Property matters. He
is a tutor at Glasgow Graduate Law School in Company Law and a Council member
of the Scottish Law Society In-House Lawyers Group.
Geraldine Gee,
Principal Solicitor, Avon Fire & Rescue
Geraldine
is a Solicitor in Local Government, and has managed a large team of lawyers
since 1994. Having worked in house for two other corporate bodies,
her experience of in house work is extensive. She combines practice,
with lecturing as a training consultant.
Wayne Gibbard,
Senior Legal Counsel, GMAC International Operations
Wayne has responsibility for managing the provision of legal support on transactional and strategic projects in 15 European countries. He has worked on several large scale corporate restructuring projects, as part of a multi-disciplinary team. Prior to joining GMAC, he spent 10 years at Volkswagen Financial Services (UK), where he was Head of Legal Services and Compliance, managing a team of 12. Wayne is also Company Secretary to the GMAC UK businesses and is a Committee Member of the C&I Group (Central Region).
Hugh Gladman,
Legal Director & Company Secretary, St James’s Place Plc
Hugh spent 8 years at Herbert Smith, 2 years as a trainee solicitor before
qualifying into the corporate department, working on a number of privatisations,
joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions. In 1994 he joined J. Rothschild
Assurance as General Counsel and was appointed St. James's Place Group Legal
Director and Company Secretary in 1997 when J.Rothschild Assurance merged
with St. James's Place Capital plc.
Simon Goldburn,
Director, Compliance Mapping
Simon was an in-house lawyer in the financial services sector for over
20 years. After a brief period in private practice, he joined London & Manchester
Assurance Group and then moved to Abbey National, where he held various positions
including Manager of the Banking Law Section, Head of the Regulatory Law
Team, Deputy Head of Group Legal Services and Acting Head of Group Legal
Services. Simon is now a Director of Compliance Mapping, which helps organisations
to communicate complex regulations and policies to their employees.
David Greaves,
General Counsel, SITA
David has 23 years’ in-house experience, including with Apple, Rank Xerox and BT. For the last 14 years he has been with SITA, the Geneva-based, airline-owned telecoms and IT organisation.He has been General Counsel there since 1999 and manages a team of 27 legal and 5 regulatory staff in Europe, U.S., South America, Middle East, Africa and Asia. David is passionate about teamwork and relationship management and has been heavily involved in restructuring and corporate governance issues in recent years. In 2005, SITA’s Legal Department was short-listed for Legal Director Global Department of the Year Award.
Gareth John,
General Counsel UK & Ireland Sodexo
Joined Sodexo in 2009, previously Director of Legal & Compliance for Transport for London; Gareth joined TfL in 2005 from Hewlett Packard.
Carolyn Kirby,
Chairman, Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales
President of the Law Society of England and Wales 2002-2003. Currently
Law Society Council member for Mid and West Wales, Chairman of the Law Society’s
Wales Committee and Council Membership Committee, member of the Law Society
Governance Group.
Janice Leiper,
VP General Counsel, Europe, H.J. Heinz Company
Janice Leiper is VP General Counsel, Europe for HJ Heinz, the food group. She is responsible for all European legal matters and legal risk across Europe for Heinz, including Russia. Janice is a dual qualified UK and US lawyer who has many years experience in-house. Janice joined Heinz from DuPont where she was responsible for the UK legal function and latterly as an M & A specialist in DuPont’s corporate HQ in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. Janice is qualified in England, Scotland and is a member of the New York Bar.
Stephen McNamara ,
Head of Legal Services, Bristol City Council
Stephen has been the Head of Legal at Bristol for 10 years. He manages an in house team of over 100 legal staff; he manages the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages, the support to the Avon Coronor, and Committee Support; he is also the Returning Officer. He previously worked for Nottinghamshire County Council and even longer ago trained and worked in a private practice in the midlands
Previous employment includes: street clearner, psychiatric nurse and lecturer in philosophy (University of Khartoum).
Stuart Morgan,
Chief Legal Counsel, Retail, Lloyds Banking Group
Stuart heads a team of professionals based in various locations around the U.K., who provide legal and regulatory advice, risk management guidance and strategic support to all areas of the Bank’s retail operations and infrastructure.
Stuart has been with the Group since July 2007. Prior to that, he was an Executive Director of Morgan Stanley and Deputy Head of its European and Asian Litigation Group, where in addition to general dispute resolution and avoidance, he was responsible for contentious regulatory issues, internal investigations and legal risk management and auditing – across numerous countries and all areas of the bank’s revenue-generating and internal operations.
Mike Morris,
General Counsel, EMEA, InfoPrint Solutions
Mike worked in private practice in Hong Kong for 5 years in the 1970’s, and then worked for IBM in the UK and in Ireland for 10 years, and for Motorola for 8 years. From 1996 to 2007 he was Legal Director, Company Secretary and Compliance Officer for Philips Electronics in the UK. He is now General Counsel, EMEA for InfoPrint Solutions, a joint venture company of Ricoh and IBM. He studied for an MBA in international business in the late 70’s, is also a Chartered Secretary, and is admitted as a solicitor in England, Ireland, Hong Kong and Victoria, Australia.
Ken Morrison,
Senior Legal Advisor/"Directeur Juridique Adjoint", Eurotunnel
Ken was formerly Head of Legal at Skandia Life before joining Eurotunnel in 2002 and has also worked in Paris at Le Breton and Associates. Previously to that he spent 4 years at Linklaters working in their London and Paris offices.
Jeremy Ogden,
Consultant, Solicitor
Jeremy is the former Deputy General Counsel at Barclays Bank PLC and former General Counsel for Global Retail and Commercial Banking. Until June 2009 when he left the bank he was responsible with his team for providing legal support and advice to the Bank’s retail and commercial businesses, both in the UK and internationally.
Francis O'Neill,
General Counsel and Company Secretary, Modern Water plc
After a few years post qualification experience with a London law firm doing general commercial work, Francis leapt at the opportunity to get into an in-house role, setting up a UK and EMEA legal operation for Geco (a Norwegian owned seismic survey company, doing first stage oil and gas exploration). This continued for a year or so after Geco was taken over by Schlumberger, then Francis opted for a change into industrial gases with The BOC Group in 1989, which became part of the Linde Group in 2006. For 18 years Francis performed various roles within the Legal Services team in BOC/Linde, including a 7 year stint in Sydney as General Counsel for the Asia Pacific region, and the last 3 years in the head office working closely with the Chief Legal Officer to build and operate a cohesive global legal function. In June 2008 Francis took on his current role with Modern Water, an AIM listed company in the water sector, which is at the leading edge of new and important technology contributing to the future sustainability of the world’s most precious commodity.
Jonathan Pearl,
Corporate Vice President and General Counsel, Sony Ericsson
Jonathan manages the Legal and IPR function of Sony Ericsson and has a team of 40 lawyers and patent attorneys based in the US, Sweden, U.K, Germany, Japan and China. Established as a joint venture by Ericsson and Sony in 2001, with headquarters in London, Sony Ericsson employs approximately 5,000 people worldwide, including R&D sites in Europe, Japan, China and America.
Philip Ramsell,
Head of Legal – Europe, Mercer Human Resource Consulting Ltd
Philip is an in-house lawyer with some 20 years experience across several
industry sectors, notably in financial services where he was Deputy Company
Secretary at Abbey before joining Mercer Human Resource Consulting in 2006
as Head of Legal for Europe. He also spent some time out of the law in corporate
strategy to give himself a different perspective on the in-house advisory
function.
Chris Smyth,
Head of Legal Services, Cheltenham & Gloucester plc
Chris spent 8 years as a solicitor in private practice working for a large firm based in Oxford before moving in-house. Since joining Cheltenham & Gloucester he has undertaken a number of different roles and is currently Head of Legal Services and Company Secretary.
Fiona Smith,
Group General Counsel and Company Secretary, Severn Trent Plc
Fiona Smith is General Counsel and Company Secretary of Severn Trent Plc. She was previously General Counsel and Company Secretary at National Grid plc, where she worked for 15 years, and then at Transport for London. She is also a non-executive director of Coventry Building Society. Fiona lives in Northamptonshire.
Evelyn Sullivan,
Executive Director, Lancaster Bar Association, USA
Executive Director of the Lancaster Bar Association (Lancaster, PA, USA) since 1988 and the Lancaster Bar Association Foundation since its inception in 2002. Coordinator of continuing legal education and public outreach programs for the Lancaster County legal community. President of the National Association of Bar Executives (2007-2008) and Pennsylvania Association of Bar Executives (1996 and 1997). Presenter at state and national conferences on topics such as strategic planning, diversity issues, technology issues for small bar associations.
Richard Tapp,
Company Secretary and Director of Legal Services, Carillion plc
Richard Tapp is Company Secretary and Director of Legal Services. Carillion
plc is a major player in the business services and construction fields, with
revenues in excess of £4bn and more than 50,000 employees, and an in-house
team of some 20 lawyers focusing on the provision of innovative business
solutions. He is the co-author of Managing External Legal Resources (ICSA
Publishing).
Geoff Wild
Director of Law and Governance, Kent County Council
Geoff heads up one of the largest teams of local authority lawyers in the country, operating as an in-house trading practice, and serving over 140 clients nationwide from across the whole of the public sector.
Geoff believes passionately that public sector lawyers should dispel their image as bureaucratic civil servants and display their talents as entrepreneurs to be measured against the best across the whole of the legal profession.
Robert Wilson,
Chief Counsel - Commercial Operations, SITA
Robert joined SITA (an IT and telecom provider to the air transport industry) at the beginning of 2005 as Chief Counsel, Commercial Operations where he has responsibility for running a global team of lawyers providing support to all operational aspects of the business. Prior to joining SITA, Robert spent 10 years at Equant (now Orange Business Services) where he held both legal and business roles based in London and Atlanta.
Suzanne Wise,
General Counsel and Company Secretary, Premier Foods Plc
Suzanne is General Counsel and Company Secretary at Premier Foods Plc having joined the Group in January 2008. Premier is the UK's leading food producer and manufacturer of some of the nations favourite foods including Hovis bread, Mr Kipling cakes, Sharwoods Asian foods, Brantson pickle, Bisto gravy and OXO stock amongst others. Premier has an annual group turnover of over £2.2bn and employs over 20,000 people in more than 60 sites across the UK. She is responsible for the Group's Legal, Company Secretarial and Trade Mark functions and also sits on the Group's Operations Board. Prior to this Suzanne was Group Head of Legal at Gallaher Group Plc, the world's fifth largest tobacco company and was responsible for the Group's legal and trade-mark functions which were based across eight countries.
Prior to her career at Gallaher, Suzanne worked in private practice, undertaking her training contract at Lewis Silken followed by two years at Crossman Block & Keith (now Crossman Block) as an IP specialist, focusing mainly on trade marks.
