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International Edition

Property portfolio Segro creates GC role

Property development company Segro has hired Elizabeth Blease for the newly-created position of general counsel and company secretary. Blease joined the firm this month for a three-year spell as company secretary from landscape product manufacturer Marshalls. Segro decided to create the general counsel position following the retirement of Segro's former company secretary, John Probert, from the firm.
1 minute read

International Edition

In-house Lawyer: The power of one

Step into Trevor Faure's corner office at Tyco International's London base and read the writing on the wall. Quite literally. Half of the wall space in Faure's office and the adjoining conference room is covered with floor-to-ceiling whiteboards. He has plenty of space, therefore, to outline the makeup of Tyco International's 40-strong legal team in Europe or brainstorm the latest management theory to catch his attention (currently, neurolinguistic psychology). But if Faure, Tyco's general counsel for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, were to use his whiteboards to diagram his company's outside counsel relationships, it would be a fairly simple picture. At the beginning of 2007, Faure radically overhauled Tyco's legal function and handed Eversheds the vast majority of the company's external work in Europe. Now, after 18 months and another review, Faure has not only renewed the Eversheds contract but fine-tuned it, building in a new range of targets and incentives aimed at bringing the law firm into tighter alignment with its client's goals. It is not surprising, perhaps, that a lawyer who is interested in theories for better engineering human behaviour would have little patience for the established, cosy law firm/client relationships that have long characterised Europe's legal market.
11 minute read

International Edition

Switalski's F&C claim upheld by appeals body

F&C Asset Management has failed in its bid to have a multimillion-pound sex discrimination claim by former legal head Gillian Switalski overturned. Switalski took the company to the Central London Employment Tribunal earlier this year, where her claims of sexual discrimination, harassment and victimisation were upheld.
2 minute read

International Edition

Lloyds renews panel as group head steps down

A raft of City firms have won spots on Lloyds TSB's legal panel after the bank completed a major review of its advisers. Firms including Allen & Overy, Linklaters, CMS Cameron McKenna, Norton Rose, Lovells, Denton Wilde Sapte and Eversheds have all been reappointed to the panel, with each firm's place secure for two years.
2 minute read

International Edition

Corporate Counsel: Thinking inside the box

Little needs to be said about the continuously increasing cost of retaining outside counsel and there is little hope that the economic downturn will do anything more than temporarily slow the increases. Moreover, the slow economy will step up the pressure on companies to reduce their legal costs.
6 minute read

International Edition

BLP leads trio on new AMEC M&A panel

Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) has been reappointed to the main corporate panel of global engineering company AMEC alongside City giant Linklaters and national heavyweight Pinsent Masons. The trio will advise the FTSE 100-listed company on all its M&A and corporate finance work.
2 minute read

International Edition

Regulatory body Ofwat floats debut legal panel

Water and sewage regulator Ofwat is reviewing its external legal advisers as it moves to set up its first-ever legal panel. The regulator is in the early stages of setting up a roster of legal advisers and is inviting firms to tender for a position. The body, which is hoping to reduce its legal expenditure, has not yet decided on the size of the panel and is also considering having a number of sub-panels in a similar fashion to other regulatory bodies including electricity and gas regulatory Ofgem.
2 minute read

International Edition

Corporate Counsel: Dust settles on backdating scandal as costs emerge

Susan Skaer was the top lawyer at Silicon Valley high-flier Mercury Interactive for five years. Today, the recently married Skaer sells real estate in Palo Alto, California, under her new name of Susan Tanner. Skaer is just one of a plethora of Silicon Valley in-house lawyers whose careers were turned upside down by backdating - the widespread and illegal practice of companies picking stock option grant dates after the fact and not accounting for them properly.
13 minute read

International Edition

Fitting the bill

Compelled to try to control legal costs, general counsel across the land are hypnotically drawn to billing-rate discounts. 'Eight percent off your standard rates' mesmerises those who have to account for spending on outside counsel. "Look what we've saved!" they proclaim. Well, maybe.I am suspicious of discounts on legal fees as a cost-control tool. Ultimately they do not alter the dysfunctionality of hourly billing. Law firms still enjoy a cost-plus arrangement, inducements to pad out law firm bills are everywhere and in-house lawyers must still scrutinise long bills. Several other aspects of fee discounts are problematic, too.
8 minute read

International Edition

Corporate Counsel: The life in-house in the dock

It is not often that in-house lawyers are featured on the pages of the Daily Mail - but then Gillian Switalski is not your average in-house lawyer.The high-profile former head of legal at F&C Asset Management - a frequent speaker at conferences and in the press - left the company in September last year before launching a sexual discrimination claim against her former employers.
6 minute read

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