Alexander Simpson, Asda's general counsel, talks to Alex Newman about dealing with the horse meat scandal, the benefits of being part of the Walmart network and why he asks his team to get behind the tills at Christmas

Within half a mile of Alexander Simpson's office beside the River Aire in Leeds are branches of Tesco, Marks & Spencer, The Co-op, Waitrose and Sainsbury's. For Asda's general counsel, as for all of his colleagues at the supermarket's head office, the encirclement is a pressing reminder of the ferocious competition within the retail sector. Not that Simpson spends much time in the aisles of rival retailers.

"I try and go out to our stores every week," he says. "We help the business on legal problems at all levels, from boardroom to checkout, shop floor and back of house." His role, which also covers legal affairs for Asda's sourcing arm, IPL, and its George clothing range, means Simpson can often be found with colleagues on the production lines and forklifts further up the supply chain.

"Everyone in these roles has an idea, and a way of communicating it," he explains. "That's where we get some of our best ideas – and that's a philosophy that should straddle any industry. You need to understand the business well and listen to your colleagues – they are the ones closest to the customer."

It is an attitude that Simpson also asks his 15-lawyer in-house team and external advisers to adopt. For three days each Christmas, partners and associates from Asda's panel firms – Slaughter and May, Walker Morris and Pinsent Masons among them – can be found behind the tills at one of the supermarket's stores. "They absolutely love it," he adds.

Whether it's a Slaughters partner cleaning up a spill in the milk aisle, or advising the company on a major Office of Fair Trading investigation into dairy price-fixing (as the firm did in 2010), Simpson's big idea is clear. As one of the major supermarket chains, Asda is operating in a crowded, challenged and challenging sector of the market, and the GC needs everyone he works with to understand the business from the ground up.

Not that he isn't effusive in his praise for those around him. "Every leader is expected to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in," he says. "I'm lucky to have a team that is like-minded: brilliant, mind-blowingly capable and who make my life very simple." That team includes legal heads of property, commercial and trading, employment and intellectual property, all of whom work with Simpson on strategic questions.

"I've found it incredibly rewarding and enjoyable," he says of his first year as GC. "Retail is an extremely dynamic, fast-moving sector and it's been both interesting and fun. You can probably say this of anyone in a similar position – life begins at the edge of your comfort zone. That has perhaps been the greatest lesson since stepping into the role."

Career-minded
Simpson, who describes his background as "pretty normal for a lawyer: hard-working, academic and argumentative", studied economics and history at university, where he developed an interest in the law while researching defamation suits against nineteenth-century Irish news editors. "I found that I was more interested in the arguments and legal debate than the history itself," he explains.

After training as a corporate lawyer at Walker Morris in Leeds – including a secondment to firm client Northern Foods, whose GC, Carol Williams, was a formative influence – Simpson made a further realisation, that hands-on involvement in a business was of greater interest than being a lawyer in private practice. He was offered a job by Northern Foods in 2007, at that point still a listed company, and took it. Three years later, he joined Asda as its first legal director.

Looking back, however, perhaps practice and commerce aren't so different after all. "I think there is an awful lot of noise and semantics concerning the differences between private practice and in-house lawyers," he reflects. "I don't think it's anything like as demarcated or different as it used to be; if you have a commercial mind, a relatively good legal brain and an aptitude for problem solving, then there's a role for you in either private practice or commerce."

While seconded to Northern Foods, Simpson managed acquisition teams and advised on a major restructuring of the business. At Asda the nature of working for a 170,000 employee-strong mega-retailer with $22.8bn (£14bn) in annual revenues means the GC has been exposed to many areas of law, including commercial dispute resolution, competition, financial services and data protection matters, as well as employment tribunals.

Another important event in Simpson's career at the grocer came at the start of last year, when he helped coordinate the company's response to the horse meat scandal enveloping the industry. Asda was in fact the first supermarket to discover adulterated meat in a range of beef Bolognese sauce, and immediately removed it from sale.

"My team had to act very fast and advise the business in the face of a media storm," the GC explains. "In such circumstances it's important to keep a firm grip on your moral compass and ensure the business acts responsibly and does the right thing, the responsible thing. Lawyers never really get credit for this, but having a good calm legal head in a crisis is immeasurably helpful."

For Simpson and his in-house colleagues, that calm head involved navigating a break with industry-wide standards and a move to unannounced audits for suppliers. The move, backed by Asda's executive board, was a key recommendation in September's independent inquiry into the scandal led by Professor Chris Elliott. "When we spoke to our suppliers [...] it was encouraging that the overwhelming majority agreed," says Simpson. "It still involved a lot of legal work to change contractual arrangements, and briefings, as you are deviating from an industry norm. But in my view Asda already has 18 million no-notice auditors in its stores every week – its customers – and we see no difference in approach with our suppliers."

His experience advising the company on broader corporate risk and ethics matters also helped Simpson prepare for the GC role he was promoted to in June 2013, after predecessor Ellie Doohan became Walmart's chief compliance and ethics officer for the EMEA region. His wider remit involves managing a team of 50 individuals, including the risk and insurance divisions.

Top table
As many GCs can attest, the chief legal role also involves another type of management role: watching over and holding to account the executive board. Or in Simpson's words: "One of the few positions in the boardroom where you can speak and advise without budgetary responsibility."

He adds: "My role is to ensure that there is effective governance for the board. You've got to be confident about speaking up and engaging effectively to solve business problems. If there are matters or questions that deserve consideration, they need to be tabled and considered properly. It is absolutely the role of a GC to help problem solve and be constructive, but you also have to push back and challenge where necessary."

The other layer of oversight, for both Asda's executive team and Simpson, is the retailer's owner – and largest non-oil company on the planet – Walmart. The Asda GC has direct reporting lines to both the UK company's CEO, Andy Clarke, and the GC of Walmart International, Tim Cheatham. Despite its reputation as an all-conquering corporate behemoth, at least in governance terms, Walmart is comfortable in letting Simpson and Asda's in-house team operate at arm's length. 

"Walmart appreciates that the Asda legal team does a great job, and has expertise in the law in the UK and EU," he says, despite sharing know-how and best practice with the parent company's lawyers and subsidiaries around the world, which Simpson calls a "huge privilege".

"The advantage of being part of a major global company is that you get an international perspective on common and shared legal issues. On any given day I could be speaking to colleagues in India, South America, China or the US, and they take different approaches to doing things."

For example, the sometimes asymmetric response of national or regional regulators and courts to evolving areas of law – such as data protection and privacy – means Simpson likely has a raft of strategies suggested by colleagues when it comes to EU or UK decision-making.

As for greater commercial and cost-sharing unity between other lawyers in the Walmart network, Simpson remains open-minded. "I think operating as a global purchaser of legal services is something that we've never ruled out," he concedes. "There are lots of US firms in the City, and some of those have strong links with Walmart in the US and elsewhere." For now, however, he says Asda is more concentrated "on getting the best for our UK business".

'We don't want lots of advisers'
When it comes to getting the most out of the company's panel firms, Simpson takes a 'less is more' approach, continuing the footprint left by his predecessors in 2009 when Asda more than halved its 16-strong legal roster.

"We work very closely with our panel firms, and we are firmly of the view that, rather than have a set timeframe on the panel arrangement, firms know the expectations, and both sides get something meaningful out of the relationship," he says, acknowledging the need for external advisers to also invest in a client.

"We don't want lots of advisers. It's not much use to anybody if you're not working with dedicated people who understand your business well," he explains, declining to comment on the company's current plans to review the panel again. And when it comes to rates, Asda's pound-saving mantra extends to buying high-end legal services: "I'm confident we've got very competitive rates; we are an everyday low-cost retailer and know how to get a good price."

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Asda's law firm shopping basket

Slaughter and May (corporate, competition, project finance)
Pinsent Masons (commercial, Scotland and Northern Ireland corporate, regulatory)
Walker Morris (real estate, corporate)
Kempner & Partners (trademark, intellectual property)
Olswang (defamation, media) Fieldfisher (pharmaceuticals, NHS)

Annual legal spend: £5m+