Imperial Tobacco restructures UK legal team
Imperial Tobacco has restructured its core UK legal team following its takeover of Spanish tobacco rival Altadis.The merged company has around 35-40 lawyers, including 10 in the legal team's Bristol headquarters. The overhaul will see the Bristol lawyers organised across four legal disciplines - company/commercial, intellectual property (IP), litigation and regulatory - rather than by geography. Lawyers within the wider group will then report into the relevant UK discipline head.
January 22, 2009 at 12:32 AM
2 minute read
Tobacco giant overhauls legal function after merger to usher in specialist teams
Imperial Tobacco has restructured its core UK legal team following its takeover of Spanish tobacco rival Altadis.
The merged company has around 35-40 lawyers, including 10 in the legal team's Bristol headquarters.
The overhaul will see the Bristol lawyers organised across four legal disciplines – company/commercial, intellectual property (IP), litigation and regulatory – rather than by geography. Lawyers within the wider group will then report into the relevant UK discipline head.
Head of group legal Adrian Welsh told Legal Week: "I wanted to move away from providing group legal support on a market-by-market basis, where each of my team would have 'first point of contact' responsibility for certain countries, and develop a structure more closely aligned to the private practice model of specialist departments with experts in specific legal disciplines."
He added: "Clearly, the structural changes have been strongly driven by the acquisition of Altadis, which has significantly enhanced our international business profile. But on a day-to-day basis it remains business as usual."
As part of the changes the Bristol legal function is also set to expand with Welsh looking to hire two IP lawyers to bring the headcount to 12.
Allen & Overy (A&O), which has close links with Imperial Tobacco, advised the company on its €12.6bn (£11.4bn) takeover, with corporate partner Jeremy Parr leading the A&O team. Altadis was advised by Spanish firm Garrigues. The deal was completed in January 2008 after Imperial Tobacco made its initial offer for its rival in July 2007.
Welsh, who joined Imperial Tobacco from Ashurst in 2002, took up the role of head of group legal in December 2007 after being promoted from the position of senior legal counsel.
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