Aggreko legal director Peter Kennerley tells Alex Aldridge how his small team works with the newly-crowned FTSE 100 company on commercial matters, including a £30m contract to supply power to the 2010 FIFA World Cup

In December last year, energy company Aggreko joined the heavyweights of the stock market, entering the FTSE 100 for the first time following an 18% rise in its share price. For the company's director of legal affairs, Peter Kennerley, who joined from Scottish & Newcastle in October 2008, it feels good to be back.

"When I was in the process of moving from Scottish & Newcastle [a FTSE 100 company until it was de-listed following its takeover by Heineken and Carlsberg in April 2008], my chief executive, Rupert Soames, joked that if I came on board he'd guarantee we would get into the FTSE 100. So it looks like he's fulfilled that side of the bargain," he says.

Glasgow-based Aggreko, which sells power from large numbers of temporary generators mainly in developing countries, continues to perform strongly, last month winning a contract to provide temporary power and temperature control for broadcast and technical services to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

The £30m contract, a joint venture with African investment holding company Shanduka Group, propelled the company to the top of the FTSE 100 gainers board. Kennerley oversaw the contract and negotiation of the power supply agreement, plus an associated sponsorship agreement. "It's still not clear whether I'll be attending the World Cup, though," he adds, dryly.

Not that Kennerley has much spare time to indulge in corporate freebies. As the senior lawyer and member of the management team in a fast-growing but still relatively small company – Aggreko employs 3,500 people worldwide, with a legal team of six – Kennerley finds himself constantly called upon to juggle a range of issues, many of them more commercial than legal.

"Compared to our market capital we have a relatively small number of employees, which suits us just fine," he explains. "Being smaller means we operate in a much less-structured way than a large company, with the management team performing in a more hands-on way. I'm not so much the lawyer, more part of the team who happens to be a lawyer."

Still, as the company's legal chief, Kennerley remains the go-to guy for certain issues – one of the most notable being risk that stems from operating in emerging market jurisdictions. "Even though we aren't a US company, we've always sought to comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And then there is the new UK Bribery Act, of course, which will affect us in a number of ways. One of my tasks is to ensure we've got all the machinery in place to prevent any risk of corruption in the business," Kennerley says, adding that he spent some of the previous week briefing the Aggreko board on the impact of the legislation.

And then there are the relationships with external counsel. Slaughter and May handles Aggreko's big-ticket legal work – a relationship that dates back to the magic circle firm acting for the company on its demerger in 1997 from transport company Christian Salvesen (now a wholly-owned subsidiary of French-listed transport group Norbert Dentressangle). For day-to-day matters, Anglo-Scots practice Dickson Minto is the firm of choice. "We're a small legal team, so we've traditionally conducted a lot of our commercial negotiations hand-in-hand with Dickson Minto," says Kennerley. In addition, Aggreko instructs a range of law firms on an issue-by-issue basis in the 29 countries in which it operates. For now there are no plans to conduct any sort of review of advisers, with the company's current annual legal spend of around £400,000 not yet justifying a more formal arrangement.

The situation represents quite a contrast to Scottish & Newcastle, which had an annual legal spend of around £7m-£8m and boasted a long list of advisers, including Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Linklaters, LG and Shepherd and Wedderburn. Kennerley – who spent 20 years at City law firm Simmons & Simmons before moving in-house in 1999 – recalls Heineken and Carlsberg's takeover of the company as one of the highlights of his career to date: "I'd seen plenty of takeovers from the outside during my days in private practice, so being on the inside of a bid in a company that was being taken over was fascinating. And I'd like to think the legal team played a large part in the process of getting the best deal possible for our shareholders."

But while he may miss some aspects of life at the brewer, such as living in Edinburgh – "a wonderful place to live and work" – Kennerley is enjoying himself in his new position. "This is an unusual role in many ways, very involved, very close to a rapidly developing business." And, he continues, it certainly beats the alternative he would have faced if he had stayed in private practice: "I'd either still be doing the same sort of work I'd always done or I'd be in some sort of management role, supervising a large group of lawyers. And I suspect I'd be feeling rather frustrated."

Career timeline

1982: Graduates from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, with law degree

1979: Joins Simmons & Simmons as an articled clerk

1986-88: Secretary of the Takeover Panel

1988: Makes partner at Simmons

1999: Joins Scottish & Newcastle as company secretary and GC

2008: Moves to Aggreko as director of legal affairs and company secretary