Editorial Board Profiles
- John Abramson
- Mirza Ahmad
- Julian Allen
- Bruce Beveridge
- David Bale
- Christopher Barnard
- Sarah Booth
- Amanda Brock
- Claire Carless
- Christopher Cash
- Anne M Coles
- Joanna Day
- Helen Dodds
- Amanda Doyle
- Nick Folland
- Andrew Garard
- John Forsyth
- Geraldine Gee
- Wayne Gibbard
- Hugh Gladman
- Simon Goldburn
- David Greaves
- Gareth John
- Robert Herga
- Rachel Jacobs
- Tom Kilroy
- Carolyn Kirby
- Janice Leiper
- Iain MacDonald
- Jane McLeod
- Stephen McNamara
- Stuart Morgan
- Mike Morris
- Ken Morrison
- Francis O'Neill
- Chris Parker
- Jeremy Ogden
- Jonathan Pearl
- Leonard Quaranto
- Philip Ramsell
- Richard Reade
- Richard Shoylekov
- Fiona Smith
- Chris Smyth
- Evelyn Sullivan
- Richard Tapp
- Ian White
- Geoff Wild
- Graeme Wilson
- Robert Wilson
- Suzanne Wise
John Abramson,
Regional Counsel, Central Europe and CIS, AIG
Regional counsel for American International Group's (AIG) general insurance operations in the Central Europe and CIS region. These comprise subsidiary companies and branch operations in 13 countries. Before joining 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.
Mirza was called to the Bar in 1984 and became Chairman of the Bar Association for Local Government & the Public Service in April 1998. He is a member of the General Council of the Bar for England & Wales and, from October 2004 to January 2009, he was also the Association of Council Secretaries & Solicitor’s Lead Officer on Ethical Governance. In November 2006, Mirza was elected a Vice-President for ACS&S and his Presidential Year commenced in November 2009.
Julian Allen,
Divisional Head of Legal, Capita Group plc
Julian qualified as a solicitor in 1997, working for Davies Arnold Cooper as a litigator before moving Carey Olsen in the Channel Islands where he transferred to the funds department and was also the firm’s data protection specialist. He has also worked as sole in-house counsel at a small bank and is now Divisional Head of Legal at Capita Group plc responsible for the legal function of half of their businesses, totalling 19,000 employees. He reports directly into the plc board.
Julian has spent 6 years as a private soldier and officer in the Territorial Army and deployed to Afghanistan Dec 09 – Mar 10 in charge of a Combat Camera Team.
Bruce Beveridge,
Deputy Director, Rural Communities Division, The Scottish Government
Bruce is a senior member of the Government Legal Service in Scotland. Having qualified in 1994 he joined the then Office of the Solicitor to the Secretary of State for Scotland in 1995 – well before Devolution and the recreation of the Scottish Parliament – and for the next five years was responsible for a wide range of legal work and organisational development. In 2000 he was seconded to the Supreme Courts in Scotland as the Legal Secretary to the Lord President of the Court of Session where he was heavily involved in the wholesale reform of personal injury procedure and also of the Court of Criminal Appeal.
In 2004 Bruce moved to Registers of Scotland as Deputy Keeper, as that organisation was moving to engage in a strategic IT partnership and introduce a world leading online registration system employing the latest digital signatures. Since August 2009 he has been the Deputy Director in charge of the Rural Communities Division in the Scottish Government. He has also sat as a Council Member of the Law Society of Scotland from 2005-9 and remains on the Audit Committee, which he formerly chaired. He is a member of the Society of Writers to the Signet, where he is an Office Bearer and member of Council and of the Management Group.In 2004 Bruce moved to Registers of Scotland as Deputy Keeper, as that organisation was moving to engage in a strategic IT partnership and introduce a world leading online registration system employing the latest digital signatures. Since August 2009 he has been the Deputy Director in charge of the Rural Communities Division in the Scottish Government. He has also sat as a Council Member of the Law Society of Scotland from 2005-9 and remains on the Audit Committee, which he formerly chaired. He is a member of the Society of Writers to the Signet, where he is an Office Bearer and member of Council and of the Management Group.
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.
Christopher Barnard,
Former General Counsel, Coca-Cola Europe Group
Until the summer of 2010 Christopher Barnard was the General Counsel for Coca-Cola Europe and is based in London. Prior to this he was General Counsel for Asia based in Tokyo. He began his career in private practice in New Zealand and joined The Coca-Cola Company there in a management role, subsequently taking an in-house legal position. Since then he has lived and worked in multiple jurisdictions.
Sarah Booth,
General Counsel, Hammerson plc
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.
Amanda Brock,
General Counsel, Canonical Group
Amanda has worked in and around London as an in-house lawyer for over ten years, having trained in the City and spent three years in private practice. She has been General Counsel of Canonical Group since 2008.
Canonical is the commercial Sponsor of the open source operating system,
Ubuntu. Prior to this She spent five years working for DSGi and rose to UK
Legal Director having joined DSGi to work on the set up of the ISP,
Freeserve. She has been a member of the Executive Board at ARAMARK, setting
up their first legal department outside of the US and has covered the
General Counsel's workload at French Connection.
Amanda studied law at Glasgow University and has Masters Degrees in US law from NYU and in IT and IP law from QMW. She has lectured extensively on and has published many articles relating to commercial, e-commerce and IT law including both lectures for business people and academic lecturing such as the IT law course at Stirling University. Amanda is the author of E:Business- The Practical Guide to the Laws and is working with Andrew Katz on a guide to Open Source Law.
Claire Carless,
Commercial Legal Director, Vodafone Group
Claire has responsibility for a team of 50 lawyers in 5 jurisdictions who provide legal support to Vodafone’s global commercial activities. She started her career in private practice in the City and Hong Kong, before moving into industry with National Power in 1992. She is a trustee of LawWorks, the pro bono charity.
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.
Joanna Day,
Director of Legal Services, Santander Corporate Banking
Joanna Day is the Director of Legal Services for Santander Corporate Banking and is responsible for providing legal support to Santander’s Corporate Banking and SME business in the UK. Joanna is also responsible for the management of legal spend by or through Santander UK plc and legal supply arrangements through the creation and management of effective legal panels.
Helen Dodds,
Head of Legal, Dispute Resolution, Standard Chartered Bank
Helen is Head of Legal, Dispute Resolution, for Standard Chartered Bank. She joined the bank in 2001 and subsequently set up and built the Dispute Resolution Team, which has, among other things, global responsibility for management of the bank’s material disputes. She also has oversight of the HR Legal team. Prior to her in house career Helen practised commercial litigation at a leading City firm.
Amanda Doyle,
Solicitor and Consultant; former VP Legal and Regulatory, Orange UK
Amanda was born and brought up in South Wales and graduated with an LLB (Hons) from the University of Warwick in 1985. She qualified as a solicitor in October 1988 having been articled with a medium-sized commercial practice.
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
After qualifying, John joined the Company Law department of a large private practice law firm. Having enjoyed interacting with client organisations supporting their commercial decision making, John decided to develop his career in-house initially with Scottish Water.
He then joined Abbey plc where he managed a team of 10 solicitors with responsibility for all aspects of their training and mentoring. 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.
Andrew Garard,
Group Legal director and Company Secretary, ITV plc
Andrew joined ITV as Group Legal Director in November 2007 and was appointed Company Secretary in May 2009.
Previously he was a Partner in the corporate department of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Green & Macrae, where his practice focused on mergers and acquisitions and projects primarily in the telecoms and media sectors in Europe, Asia and the US. Before that, from 2003 to 2006 he was Group General Counsel and Company Secretary at Cable & Wireless PLC, responsible for global legal, regulatory, compliance and insurance affairs, and from 1996 to 2003 he was at Reuters Group PLC where his roles included Global Head of Legal and Deputy General Counsel based in the UK and, earlier, General Counsel Asia based in Hong Kong.
Geraldine Gee,
Solicitor in Local Government
Geraldine has managed a large team of lawyers since 1994. Currently she is the Monitoring officer for her Authority, and as such, has a statutory responsibility for corporate governance. 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,
Legal Counsel, RBS
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.
Robert Herga,
General Counsel, Carpet Right
Robert is a solicitor and General Counsel to the privately owned retailer Carpet Right.
Prior to this appointment he was General Counsel and Company Secretary at BAA, the world's leading airport company (running seven UK airports and a number of overseas airports), one of the largest commercial landlords in the UK and one of the construction industry's largest clients.
Gareth John,
General Counsel UK & Ireland, Sodexo
Gareth studied English and French law at Exeter University and Université D'Aix-Marseille, gaining LLB (European) Hons. He qualified as solicitor 1994 at Frere Cholmeley and joined Hewlett-Packard in 1997.
In 2002, he was appointed Hewlett-Packard’s Head of Legal for the UK and Ireland. His practice areas include all aspects of company and commercial work, with focus on IP and IT.
Gareth joined Transport for London in 2005 as Director of Legal & Compliance, leading and managing a department of 30 lawyers dealing with transport infrastructure projects, all forms of employment, commercial and public law disputes, the acquisition and disposal of a significant property portfolio, CPOs and planning issues.
In early 2009 Gareth took up the general counsel role at facilities management services provider Sodexo UK and Ireland.
Rachel Jacobs,
General Counsel, Informa Group plc
Rachel Jacobs worked at CMS Cameron Mckenna in the London corporate practice for 6 years before joining Informa, the publishing, events and training group, in 2007. Informa is one of the largest companies in the FTSE 250 and operates through 150 offices in 40 countries. Initially joining as UK General Counsel, in 2008 she also took over responsibility for the Asia Pacific region. Rachel is now General Counsel of Informa Group plc based in London with responsibility for managing legal issues for the Informa group worldwide outside the US. Since joining Informa, Rachel has advised on a number of high profile corporate transactions including the £500m public offer for Datamonitor plc in 2007 and the £1.4bn redomiciliation of the Company to Switzerland and associated £250m rights issue in 2009. She also advises on the full range of legal issues relating to Informa’s business.
Rachel has a first class BSc (hons) in Environmental Science from University of Leeds. She was born and brought up in Yorkshire and now lives in London.
Tom Kilroy,
Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Company Secretary for Misys plc
Tom Kilroy serves as Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Company Secretary for Misys plc, having been appointed to this position in August 2009.
Prior to joining Misys, Tom spent eight years with GE Healthcare (a division of the General Electric Company), and with Amersham plc, which was acquired by GE in 2004. During that time, Tom held roles of increasing seniority, rising to become General Counsel, EMEA, responsible for a business with revenues of $5 billion.
Earlier in his career, Tom specialised as an intellectual property lawyer at Hasbro Inc, developing international IP strategies. Prior to that, Tom was a litigator at Hammond Suddards in the City of London. He began his legal career at Farrer & Co, also in London.
Tom is admitted as a solicitor in England & Wales. He graduated from Oxford University with a BA (Hons) in Metallurgy & Materials Science. Tom is married with three children. He lives with his family in Oxfordshire, UK.
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.
Chairman of the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales since 1999.
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.
Iain MacDonald,
Legal Counsel, ALSTOM UK and ALSTOM Grid
Iain MacDonald is in charge of corporate and commercial legal affairs for Alstom in the UK, including the newly acquired business Alstom Grid.
In this role, Iain advises all levels of Management on corporate and commercial matters, contracts (working individually as also in cross-functional teams including design, engineering, operations, insurance and procurement functions), Compliance (legislative and corporate governance), EU Competition law, property, insurance, export control, employment law, dispute resolution, etc.
Iain joined Alstom in May 2003 when he was primarily involved in preparing the UK Division of T&D for sale.
Prior to joining Alstom, he held a number of legal counsel and company secretarial positions within Workspace Group PLC, Reliance Security Group PLC and Burberrys Limited. Before working in-house, Iain worked as a solicitor in private practice in Scotland for five years.
Iain is a graduate of Aberdeen (LL.B and Dip.LP; 1988) and Kingston (MBA; 1999) Universities as also a UK qualified solicitor.
Jane McLeod,
Deputy Solicitor to the Scottish Government
Jane has responsibility for the provision of legal services on justice and constitutional matters, health, employment and litigation. She is also Finance Director for the SG’s Legal Directorate. Having trained in private practice and after spending a brief spell in local government, Jane became a government lawyer in 1983. She has worked in a variety of mainly advisory posts since then and became a member of the Senior Civil Service on devolution in 1999. Before moving to her current post in 2007, she spent 5 years as Chief Executive of the Scottish Law Commission.
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 has worked in private practice in Hong Kong, and for IBM, Motorola and Philips Electronics. He is now General Counsel, EMEA for InfoPrint Solutions, a Ricoh company. He has an MBA in international business, and is also a Chartered Secretary, and 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.
Chris Parker,
Senior Director, Law and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft Ltd
Chris leads the Law and Corporate Affairs team in the UK.
He has significant legal and corporate affairs experience in the information technology industry. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris was Senior Counsel for Apple Europe and Legal & Government Affairs Director at Compaq. He also spent more than 17 years at Digital Equipment Co. Ltd (DEC) in various legal roles.
His main areas of expertise are IT licensing, Intellectual Property and competition law. He has been involved in a number of competition investigations by both UK and EU authorities and was instrumental in settling the European Commission's investigation into DEC in 1997 (the Digital Undertaking).
Chris is an English barrister and holds a law degree from the University of Hull.
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.
Leonard Quaranto,
Senior Group Counsel, Smiths Group plc
An international corporate/commercial General Counsel with extensive management, strategic, Executive Board and transactional experience with FTSE/Fortune 100 FMCG/Industrial multinational companies. Previously GC to a number of significant companies including Allied Domecq, Pernod Ricard, EFAD Holding, Kuwait and Kimberly-Clark Corporation. Fluent English, French, Italian, Spanish.
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. Time in commercial private practice in London, followed by a long spell in the tobacco industry before joining Abbey in 1994, gives him a very broad spread of personal experiences to draw from.
He also spent some time out of the world of law in corporate strategy to give himself a different perspective on the in-house advisory function. He offers very practical insights into both practising law in-house as well as creating and managing legal teams, budgets and external legal panels.
Richard Reade,
UK General Counsel, ISS
Richard joined ISS, from Pinsent Masons, in 2007. As UK General Counsel he established and built the UK legal function and set up the first UK legal team. Richard has influenced global ISS legal policies - particularly in contractual risk management. In 2008 he was nominated Senior Manager of the Year and in 2010 he was given an international remit.
ISS are a global support services company whose work includes facility management; security; cleaning; catering; landscaping and construction. Forbes lists them as the world’s 4th largest private employer. In the UK, they have 43,000 employees. Globally, the number exceeds 500,000. ISS were published, in the American Fortune Magazine, as the world’s 6th best outsourcing company (data complied and assessed by the IAOP) and recently described by a Sky News Business Editor as “the largest company you’ve never heard of”.
Richard developed the award winning ISS Contract Review Assessment Model (iCRAM) for the UK business. iCRAM forms the backbone of the group wide contract management process. Versions of the model are now used throughout the ISS world in at least 30 of the 51 ISS countries including the USA.
Richard’s oversees most corporate legal issues in the UK but with particular emphasis on risk management in commercial contracts. He has spoken internationally, and written, on various legal management topics including Legal Process Outsourcing; Strengths Based Leadership and White Water Management. He sits on the Law Society’s International Issues Committee and has advised research units of world leading educational establishments.
Richard Shoylekov,
Group Company Secretary and General Counsel, Wolseley plc
Richard joined Wolseley plc in December 2007.He is secretary to the Board and all of the Committees of the Board and is a member of the Disclosure and Executive Committees. He has responsibility for the Group’s legal affairs, insurance and corporate responsibility.
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.
Chris Smyth,
Solicitor and Consultant; former Head of Legal Services, Cheltenham &
Gloucester plc
Chris spent eight years as a solicitor in private practice working for a large firm based in Oxford before moving in-house in 1988, when he joined Cheltenham & Gloucester. While at C&G he undertook a number of different roles, latterly as Head of Legal Services and Company Secretary. Chris retired from C&G in 2010 since which time he has been engegaed in a number of Buisness Consultancy roles for Law Firms, Trade Associations and one of the Financial Services Regulators.
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).
Ian White,
Associate of Ashridge Business School/Chief Legal Officer Programme
Ian is the former General Counsel/Company Secretary of the Wilkinson Group, a major retailer with 340 stores nationwide and 23,000 employees. At Wilkinson he covered all major areas of law as well as acting as Secretary to the Board. He began his career practising at the common law bar but has spent most of his time as an in-house lawyer and consultant working across the construction, financial services, gas and chemicals and retail sectors. He is an Associate of Ashridge Business School where he lectures in corporate governance and of the Chief Legal Officer Programme. As well as being a lawyer, Ian has an MBA from Ashridge. In his spare time, he acts as a Trustee of Elizabeth Fitzroy Support, a charity for people with learning disabilities.
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.
Graeme Wilson,
Director, Legal & Commercial Solutions
Having completed his articles (internship) and being admitted as an attorney, Graeme joined GoldFields as a member of their legal department where he gained extensive experience in all areas of corporate and commercial law.
In 1997, Graeme moved to SAB (now SAB Miller) as their in-house legal advisor. He furthered his experience in general corporate and commercial transactions interacting with and advising the senior executive and management of the company. At SAB, Graeme also gained valuable experience in sports sponsorship and sponsorship law.
In 2000, Graeme took up the position as Legal & Commercial Manager for Accenture and was responsible for the Africa region. Working for one of the world’s leading consultancy companies, Graeme gained invaluable experience in the IT environment and outsourcing.
Having worked for blue-chip companies and wanting to gain start-up experience, Graeme was invited by the shareholders of ThisDay to be part of the ThisDay start up team. Graeme was general legal counsel and company secretary for the ThisDay Group.
Graeme founded Legal & Commercial Solutions in April 2005. From a small start-up with few clients, Graeme has grown the business to one which has a multiplicity of clients ranging across all industries and varying in size from multinational to SME.
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.
