Shell Appoints New General Counsel
The appointment comes after the group's former GC took up a role at Nestle.
September 06, 2019 at 04:47 AM
2 minute read
Royal Dutch Shell has appointed a new group chief ethics and compliance officer and general counsel (GC) of compliance.
Michael Coates will take up the role, succeeding the company's former chief ethics and compliance officer Leanne Geale, who left to join Nestlé as executive vice-president and general counsel at the end of July.
Coates started in his new role last month (August 1), and is based in The Hague in the Netherlands. He reports into Shell's group legal director Donny Ching.
He said: "I am delighted to be succeeding Leanne Geale as group chief ethics and compliance officer and wish her very well in her new role at Nestlé S.A. I look forward to leading the Shell ethics and compliance office and to promoting Shell's core values of honesty, integrity and respect for people which underpin our work with employees, contractors, suppliers, non-governmental organisations and others. This includes a strong focus not only on compliance but also on ethical conduct and behaviour."
Coates first joined the company in 2004 as a senior legal counsel. He joined from Magic Circle firm Slaughter and May, where he was an associate for more than three years. In 2011, he joined the company's executive committee and became executive assistant to chief executive Peter Voser.
In 2013, Coates was appointed U.K. head of legal for the company, replacing Bob Henderson who relocated to the U.S.
Four years later, Coates was appointed associate general counsel for the company's global upstream business.
Anglo-Dutch oil major Shell has called on a variety of law firms for work in recent years, including Clifford Chance and Slaughters.
In 2015, Slaughters advised on Shell's mammoth £47bn acquisition of natural gas producer BG Group. The deal was the largest in the energy sector in several years and one that helped make 2015 a record-breaking year for M&A.
In 2017, CC won a leading role for Shell on its £3bn disposal of North Sea assets to Chrysaor Holdings.
Shell last refreshed its legal panel in 2016, with Magic Circle firms Allen & Overy and CC both securing coveted places alongside Eversheds, Norton Rose Fulbright, Baker & McKenzie and Reed Smith.
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