Reuters has built a strong reputation as a go-to employer for ambitious corporate counsel. Michelle Madsen investigates whether the respected news provider can maintain its focus in the wake of its recent merger with Thomson

When Reuters, the world's most venerable newswire, agreed to merge with Canadian media giant Thomson in May, the move raised concerns from journalists fearful for their jobs and unions worried that the company's celebrated impartiality would be compromised.

Since then Reuters' chief executive, Tom Glocer, has made reassurances that the majority of the deal's projected $500m (£245m) savings would be found in 'non-people' areas such as property, but little has yet been said about how the merger will affect the legal teams at either of the companies.

One change that has emerged is that Reuters' highly-rated general counsel, Rosemary Martin, will not hold the top role when the two companies merge. That job has been handed to Thomson general counsel Deirdre Stanley, who will determine how the new team will be run.

The legal team, from Reuters' side at least, will be familiar with change. Four years ago Glocer slashed Reuters' legal costs as part of a wider cost-cutting exercise that reduced the media and information business' global legal team from 60 to 40.

Glocer's cutbacks were in response to reported losses of nearly £400m in 2002, the biggest in Reuters' 156-year history. As customers cut back on its services, Reuters cut back on staff, scrapping more than 3,000 positions. In the same year head of legal Stephen Mitchell parted with the company, leaving Martin to take the helm.

With such a substantial overhaul still fresh in the minds of many, a period of further unrest might be unsettling but Reuters' lawyers seem unperturbed.

The team, which is divided up by region with lawyers working in Asia, the Americas and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), has seen further change in recent months with the departure of EMEA legal head Claire Chapman to Inchcape and the arrival of her replacement, Daragh Fagan, who joined from Italian oil giant ENI
in August.

Fagan now leads a team of 25 across Reuters' offices in London and Geneva who turn their hands to a wide variety of intellectual property (IP) and commercial work. Fagan says Reuters attracts lawyers with a broad range of skills and an attitude to fit the company.

"Lawyers coming to us need to have a good background in IP and also lots of commercial corporate experience," says Fagan. "We look for people with the right approach and mentality and try to develop people beyond their narrow specialism."

Slaughter and May corporate partner and long-term Reuters adviser Nigel Boardman says the breadth of work lawyers can expect to find at the company means Reuters offers a solid foundation for ambitious lawyers.

"Lawyers at Reuters do a wide range of work including IT, IP, media and financial services, as well as getting a good handle on the business," says Boardman. "The company provides an excellent training."

It is not just those lawyers currently at Reuters who are making waves. The company's legal team has an impressive list of alumni which includes the newly-appointed head of legal at ITV, Andrew Garard, HP Billiton's European counsel, Stephen Mitchell, and credit rating agency Moody's European counsel, Matt Foss – an indication that the name Reuters on your CV adds kudos for ambitious company lawyers.

Given that Glocer himself is a lawyer by trade, it is not surprising that Reuters has succeeded in attracting talented lawyers to its team despite the previous restructuring, which could at some companies have turned off potential recruits. Glocer joined the company in 1993 from New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell as deputy general counsel of Reuters America before going on to become chief executive of Reuters Information and then group chief executive in 2001.

The Thomson merger is the latest chapter in Glocer's plan to secure the future of Reuters and, if it is cleared by competition authorities in the UK and the US, will see the two companies combine to form the world's largest financial information provider with a market value of £8.7bn.

When asked how the merger was likely to affect Reuters' lawyers, Fagan says his team are concentrating on their day-to-day tasks.

"Nothing has happened yet in the integration of the teams as the merger has not yet been OK'd by the either the European Commission or the Department of Justice," says Fagan. "However, people are keen to have a chance to work on that transaction. It will involve lots of restructuring. There is a feeling that the business is going to get bigger and stronger."

Much of the controversy surrounding the merger of the two news giants has centred on one of the founding principles of Reuters, which stipulates that no one single shareholder should own more than a 15% stake in the company. "There was a special case made for Thomson," comments Fagan. "It is felt that there are sufficient safeguards. The business will be strengthened rather than weakened."

In contrast to Reuters' relatively open stance, the Canada-based Thomson remains tight-lipped about the impact of the merger on its legal team, refusing to give even basic information on the size and structure of its in-house function.

A Thomson spokesperson said: "It is too early to speculate on what will happen to the legal teams. We are currently focused on the acquisition."

The attempt to structure the union as a merger of equals is regarded to have made combining the companies that much more sensitive. With an executive team comprising almost equal numbers of Thomson and Reuters personnel, early indications suggest that further-down-the-line roles will also be split evenly.

It will now be down to Deirdre Stanley as the new global legal head to decide how to best merge the band of more than 80 lawyers she will inherit once the deal completes.

A former Cravath Swaine & Moore corporate lawyer, Stanley joined Thomson's then nine-strong legal team in 2002 from InterActive Corp, where
she had been general counsel.

As Thomson shifted its business focus away from its diversified interests including print media, oil and gas towards electronic information in the early years of the decade, Stanley built a legal team that would cater to Thomson's changing needs. The team is also reported to have built up a strong transactional focus, in contrast to the broader commercial range of Reuters' team.

In an interview with Legal Week sister title National Law Journal last year, Stanley described how she tries to run a team: "It is not about just having a smart lawyer. It is having a smart lawyer who has business context."

Thomson is now organised into five different product areas: financial; healthcare; legal; science; and tax and accounting, with each area supported by a general counsel and its own team in offices in cities across the world, including New York and London.

Given that Stanley has been handed the top legal role, it is not clear what fate lies in store for Martin post-merger. One of the founding members of in-house lobbying group the GC100 and chair of the company's charitable arm, the Reuters Foundation, Martin has a high profile and will not be short of offers should she look to move away from the company.

Robert Walters recruitment consultant Richard Bailey comments: "We see a lot of general counsel at her level go into consulting roles, either at law firms or by setting up their own practice. Anyone with her skill-set will be highly sought-after."

However the dust settles, one Reuters adviser concludes that the company's choice of chief executive will ensure the company remains a go-to employer.
He says: "With Glocer at the helm, it looks like Reuters' culture is likely to remain intact."

How they measure up

Reuters

FTSE 100 ranking: 70

Size of team: 40 worldwide

General counsel: Rosemary Martin

Employees: 16,900

Revenue: £2.6bn

Advisers: Slaughter and May,
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer,
Ashurst, Weil Gotshal & Manges, Clifford Chance, Burges Salmon, Jackson Lewis, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, Mayer Brown

Thomson

Size of team: around 48
worldwide

General counsel: Deirdre Stanley

Employees: 32,000

Revenue: $6.6bn (£3.3bn)

Advisers: Allen & Overy, Shearman & Sterling, Torys,
Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke