Practical LawConferences

Neville Howe is responsible for legal, risk and compliance at RSA, dealing with all aspects of the insurer’s UK & Western European business – a £4 billion insurance operation with a wide reaching market; from pets at More Than to shops and wind farms globally.

Neville has spent over 20 years working in insurance, previously at Lloyds, St James’s Place and AEGON before moving to RSA in 2005.

Before qualifying as a lawyer, Neville spent 10 years in the Army, finishing as a Captain in the Royal Engineers.  He is a keen sailor with 3 children and lives on the Suffolk coast, where he can indulge his passion for being on the water.

Will Hutton is chair of the Big Innovation Centre, a business lead do tank and innovation hub that promotes open innovation. He is also the former executive vice chair of The Work Foundation. Will is an outstanding conference facilitator and keynote speaker on European and global economic issues

Will began his career as a stockbroker and investment analyst, before working in BBC TV and radio as a producer and reporter. From 1983-88 he was the Economics Editor on ‘Newsnight’ and a reporter for ‘Panorama’. From 1981-83 he was the Producer/Director of ‘The Money Programme’ for BBC2 and from 1978-81 he was the producer/editor of Radio 4’s programme ‘The Financial World Tonight’. Before joining The Work Foundation, Will spent four years as editor in chief of the Observer and he continues to write a weekly column for the paper.

The Work Foundation is an independent, not for dividend research based consultancy which is the most influential voice on work, workplace and employment issues in Britain. Will resigned from his position as executive vice Chair in 2011. He is now Chair of the Big Innovation Centre, which exists to make the UK a global open innovation hub, to build a world-class innovation ecosystem, and re-balance and grow the UK economy.

Will has written several best-selling economic books including The World We’re In, The State We’re In, The State to Come, The Stakeholding Society and On The Edge with Anthony Giddens. The State We’re In was the first best seller on political economy for a generation. Will’s book, The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century, was published in the UK in January 2007.

Will is now Principal of Hertford College, Oxford. He previously won the Political Journalist of the Year award and has written a weekly column for more than 15 years, six years at the Guardian and nine at the Observer.

Chris joined the Co-op in Autumn last year as the interim GC to the Consumer Services division, which encompasses the general insurance and other non-food businesses of the Co-op group.  From October 2013 to the Spring of 2015, Chris served as the interim GC of Post Office Ltd, where, in addition to running the legal function, he had responsibility for the internal audit, risk and security functions, together with the operations of an in-house mediation team. As well as being a highly regarded lawyer, Chris has a strong commercial background working for companies such as Royal London (the UK’s largest life and pensions mutual), Singer & Friedlander (acquired by Kaupthing), National Australia Bank and Lloyd’s of London. An Australian by birth, he started his career in the UK in the corporate finance team at Norton Rose, a job which eventually took him to parts of central and eastern Europe chasing various M&A deals. He has published a number of blogs on the future direction of the in-house profession.

Clare is the Group Head of Legal of UDG Healthcare plc which offers outsourced commercialisation services to international healthcare clients primarily in the areas of supply chain, packaging, sales, marketing, and medical services. A FTSE 250 company, UDG Healthcare is active in over 20 countries and employs over 8,000 people. Clare leads an international legal team advising and supporting on all aspects of legal risk management for the Group. She plays a pivotal role in the implementation of the Group’s strategy of diversification and expansion, having led and advised on over 20 international and domestic M&A transactions in the last five years. Prior to joining UDG Healthcare, Clare held other in house commercial and corporate roles including at Alliance & Leicester plc, and practised as a corporate/M&A lawyer for seven years at Eversheds and Gateleys.

With a background as an investment banker and a barrister, Miranda Brawn has spent her career at some of the most prestigious global financial institutions. Miranda’s primary role is to manage the company’s legal risk across Europe for the derivatives, regulatory & securities financing business within an investment bank in the City of London.

Miranda is a business and diversity leader who continuously demonstrates her outstanding devotion to diversity, equality and inclusion outside of her full time work. In 2015, she led a new initiative which is shining a spotlight on the lack of diversity in the City of London. She was also voted one of the Top 30 most inspirational women in the City of London by Brummel and featured in the CityAM “Women in the City” Powerlist (Business and Finance category).

Amanda is General Counsel of Global Switch and a European Representative of the Open Invention Network. Having been General Counsel, Canonical – lead commercial sponsor of the open source operating system Ubuntu and open stack cloud partner – for 5 years, where she managed the worldwide legal function. Her experience is diverse, in particular in  the technology sector and her expertise includes open source software, cloud computing, big data, IOT, new governance models for co-operation and “open” as well as device manufacture and distribution.

With over 20 years of experience of commercial and IT law her experience lends itself to her very commercial approach to legal advice. This has been primarily in house, including roles as European Manager at DSG International where she was the first lawyer at the ISP, Freeserve (UK’s first and biggest .com IPO), UK Legal Director, Aramark and General Counsel Nicole Farhi & French Connection.
Amanda is as a solicitor, admitted in England and Scotland and has a Masters in IP and IT law from Queen Mary and a Masters in Comparative Jurisprudence from New York University.  Amanda is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary and was a founder of the QM Legal Incubator Q:Legal. She is a Judge and part of the Advisory Board of the UK Open Source Awards.

She has spoken at academic, legal and business conferences internationally and written extensively on open source, tech and commercial law, including being the author of “E-Business: A Practical Guide to the Laws” and having contributed the chapter on commercial agreements to Oxford University Press’s “Free and Open Source Software, Policy, Law and Practice”. She is currently writing a new legal text, “Legal Issues in IoT: Smart Laws for Smart Businesses”, to be published in February 2016.

Head of Legal reporting to the Direct Line Group General Counsel with experience of building and leading legal teams. Extensive experience of leading complex IT and BPO outsourcings projects to deliver robust domestic and cross border outsourcing and general commercial agreements. Advised on a number of corporate disposals and joint venture arrangements. Expertise of managing contractual disputes. Excellent communication skills and the ability to gain support from staff and develop strong relationships with stakeholders.

Specialist Areas:

• Outsourcing and General Commercial Agreements
• Corporate transactions (advising on Transitional Services Agreements)
• Supplier renegotiations and handling disputes
• Regulatory Compliance in relation to Outsourcing and Intra-Group Agreements
• Cost management of external counsel and managing legal panel firms

Chris Chapman joined Kroll Ontrack in June 2014 and is responsible for the team of Legal Technologies Consultants serving clients in the UK. Chris’ aim is to strengthen the relationships with those who instruct Kroll Ontrack for ediscovery matters and to seek new opportunities with those who have not worked with us. Chris’ day to day responsibilities include arranging and attending meetings with law firms and corporate organisations to provide advice on ediscovery best practice and overseeing specific projects to ensure they are handled in the most cost effective, efficient and defensible manner. His main focus is the client; Chris is able to tailor advice based on the technical expertise and experience of the customer, respond efficiently when queries or changes to project circumstances arise and eliminate, where possible, uncertainty inherent in electronic evidence matters. Prior to joining Kroll Chris spent 10 years with Thomson Reuters (Legal) where he held various posts in the sales department, culminating in managing a small team responsible for barristers’ chambers subscriptions to legal information websites. He joined Thomson Reuters shortly after obtaining a degree in Business Management at Bradford University.

Leo is Senior Legal Counsel in Statoil’s Global Strategy and Business Development legal team, based in London.  Managing internal and external legal teams on high value public and private M&A international transactions, Leo is responsible for commercial and legal risk analysis, corporate governance, deal structuring and negotiation, as well as a wide variety of commercial contracts. Leo has worked across a variety of sectors including energy, banking, technology, insurance and chemicals, and has an MBA from London Business School.

Laura joined Yum! in April 2015 where she jumped straight into advising all aspects of the business at KFC and Pizza Hut UK&I. She now focuses on KFC UK&I and Central & Eastern Europe. Prior to joining Yum! Laura was a real estate lawyer in private practice in the City. Laura came to law a bit later than most having spent several years in a former life working for a tour operator based in the French Alps, but decided all that skiing and fondue was too much like hard work and retrained as a lawyer.

Simon Evans is Group General Counsel and Vice President of ArcelorMittal, the world’s leading steel company. Mr Evans joined the Company in September 2001 as General Counsel and is based in the London corporate office. He has over 25 years experience in corporate and commercial law in both industry and private practice. Formerly, Mr Evans was European Counsel at Rohm and Hass Company (now Dow Chemical) and prior to that he worked at the law firm Taylor Joynson Garrett, London. Mr Evans is a graduate of Oxford University and the College of Law, Guilford. Mr Evans is married with 3 daughters.

Amanda joined Collinson Group in 2011 as Group General Counsel and currently manages all legal resources and matters for the Group globally.   Amanda previously worked in private practice at various firms including Norton Rose and niches firms including David Price Solicitors and Advocates and Joelson Wilson.   Prior to joining Collinson Group Amanda held senior in-house positions at CBS Outdoor and JD Wetherspoon covering a wide range of corporate and commercial deals.

Collinson Group is a global leader in shaping and influencing customer behaviour to drive revenue and add value for their clients operating in four core divisions: loyalty, lifestyle benefits, insurance and assistance.   Collinson Group manages over 20 million end customers and supports clients in over 170 countries. Together they have more than 800 clients including MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Diners, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, InterContinental Hotels Group and Hilton.

Victoria joined Metro Bank as a Solicitor in March 2014 to provide legal advice to the business and develop the legal function.

Victoria completed her training contract at emw law and prior to joining Metro Bank, Victoria worked in private practice as a litigator at Davenport Lyons and Beachcroft.

In her spare time, Victoria enjoys martial arts, socialising and travelling.

Andrew is Head of Business Development of the London and Johannesburg offices and has been at Baker & McKenzie since 2009. Andrew is deeply experienced in managing global client relationships within the legal industry with over a decade of experience. He has been involved in developing the account and financial protocols which have enabled the smooth running of the Baker & McKenzie relationship with many clients. In more recent times Andrew had worked with legal procurement at FTSE organisations and helped them to design their legal panels and RFP process.

Tristan Grimmer is a Senior Associate in the Compliance & Investigations Group of Baker & McKenzie’s London office. He specialises in advising clients on compliance with competition law, export controls and trade sanctions, and anti-bribery and corruption laws. His practice is focussed on advising clients on the management and resolution of external and internal investigations, as well as counselling clients on the design and implementation of effective corporate compliance programmes. Tristan’s client base is spread across a wide range of sectors, with a particular focus on the oil & gas, aerospace & defence and financial services sectors.

Sally-Ann was the first lawyer to join Metro Bank in February 2012. Her role as General Counsel is to develop the legal function in a fast changing, expanding business.

Prior to joining Metro Bank, Sally-Ann spent nearly 20 years in Manchester undertaking various legal roles with the Co-operative Bank, Co-operative Financial Services and the Co-operative Banking Group.

Sally-Ann started her career in matrimonial and criminal law in Northampton, before moving on to join the corporate transactional team at Manches & Co in 1989.

Adam Kokas is the Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Chief Human Resources Officer and Secretary of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAWW) and its airline operating subsidiaries, Atlas Air, Inc. and Polar Air Cargo Worldwide, Inc.

In his role, Mr. Kokas’ responsibilities include leading the company’s global legal, regulatory, compliance, government affairs, corporate ethics, human resources, executive compensation and benefits strategy and execution.  Adam joined the company as Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary in October 2006. The following year he took on responsibility for the company’s Human Resources department.  He was appointed to Executive Vice President in 2014.

Mr. Kokas serves on the Board of Directors of several AAWW subsidiary companies, including Atlas Air, Inc., Polar Air Cargo Worldwide, Inc., a joint venture with DHL Express, and Titan Aviation, a dry leasing subsidiary.

In addition to his corporate responsibilities, Mr. Kokas is the Chairman of the AAWW Political Action Committee. He is also the Chairman of the Cargo Airline Association and the Airlines for America Law Council (each a non-profit trade organization).

Prior to joining Atlas, he was with Ropes & Gray LLP, where he was a partner in its Corporate Department, focusing on general corporate, securities and business law. Prior to joining Ropes & Gray, Mr. Kokas was a partner at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP.

Mr. Kokas earned his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College, and is a cum laude graduate of the Boston University School of Law, where he was an Edward M. Hennessey scholar. He is a member of the Bar in New York and New Jersey.

As Chief Counsel, Corporate, Howard is the lawyer responsible for BG Group’s M&A and corporate finance matters globally. Howard trained and qualified at Clifford Chance and he and his team have spent the last nine months working intensively on BG Group’s $50bn merger with Shell, providing strategic advice to the senior executive team on a wide range of issues and challenges. Howard has also led the BG Group legal function through large capital market fundraisings in the US and Europe and on more than $10bn of M&A and business development transactions in the last five years.  Howard was also nominated in 2015 as a Rising Star in the Legal 500 Power List.

Rhodri Lewis joined the Welsh Rugby Union Group in August 2010 as the Head of Legal Affairs and is responsible for all legal matters in relation to both the Welsh Rugby Union and Millennium Stadium.

Rhodri trained at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and qualified with the firm as a Corporate Associate, where his work included advising the London 2012 Olympic Bid Team on the corporate aspects of the bid.

In 2005, Rhodri joined the Legal Commercial team at UEFA, the governing body of European football, where he was responsible for legal commercial matters across all of UEFA’s properties, including media rights, sponsorship and licensing agreements for UEFA EUROs, the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League.

Before joining the Welsh Rugby Union Group, Rhodri was the Senior Solicitor at The FA Group, responsible for a broad range of matters in relation to both The Football Association and Wembley Stadium.

Rhodri was named In-House Lawyer of the Year at The Lawyer’s 2015 Awards.

Sarah Livingston was appointed as Legal Director at Partnerships in Care in January 2013.  PiC is the leading operator in mental health in-patient facilities, with over 2,200 residential beds across the country. In the 3 years that she has been there she has led a ground up governance review, implementing a ward to board reporting structure to ensure oversight of all patient and safety matters, experienced the sale of the business from private equity owners to an American based behaviour facilities operator and facilitated the growth of the company from 1,200 beds and 23 hospitals to 2,200 beds and over 70 facilities.

Rob leads the worldwide Legal – Account Support team, a team of 120 lawyers providing legal services to our Enterprise Services business focusing on the key priorities of revenue generation, maximisation of margin and risk mitigation on our accounts.

Previously, Rob was the VP leading the EMEA team providing legal support for the Enterprise Services business in the region.  In addition, Rob was the UK&I Country Counsel where he led a team of attorneys and negotiators providing end-to-end legal support and strategic legal advice to all of HP’s business units in the UK&I.

Rob received his law degree from Exeter University, attended College of Law (Chester) and is admitted as a solicitor in England

Raj Singh-Dehal joined Center Parcs in 2009 as Company Secretary and joined the Board of Directors as HR & Commercial Services Director in 2015.  Raj has a broad remit encompassing Legal, HR, Compliance and Procurement.  In 2015, Raj played a central role in a landmark year for Center Parcs; securing a site in Ireland for the 6^th Center Parcs location, completing a £1,050 billion re-financing and culminating in a £2.5 billion sale of the company to Brookfield.  Raj was recognised in “The Lawyer Hot 100 2016” for the work he has undertaken.

Prior to joining Center Parcs, Raj practised as a Corporate Lawyer at Eversheds and then went on to head the Corporate & Commercial Legal Team at Alliance & Leicester Plc.

The Center Parcs brand is synonymous with premium quality short breaks in the UK. Center Parcs employs 7,500 people and welcomes over 2 million guests to its 5 UK sites.

Neil Stewart is Associate General Counsel – Director, Litigation Global Regions at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

The mission of the Litigation Global Regions group is to protect HPE’s interests across the whole spectrum of significant litigation matters outside the US.

The Litigation Global Regions team partners with Office of the General Counsel colleagues in all countries in EMEA, APJ and LAC to manage, monitor and accurately report on the HPE litigation portfolio for those countries. The Litigation team is also responsible for litigation budget management with the goal of supporting HPE’s litigation portfolio in the most cost-efficient manner possible.

Prior to this role, at HP, Neil was Litigation Counsel (Litigation Global Regions) and was responsible for managing the Litigation portfolio for UK&I (as well as some other jurisdictions).  Neil was also the lead lawyer for the Affirmative Recoveries Program in the Regions.  Neil served in this role from March 2013 until October 2015.  Neil is based in Bracknell in the UK.

Before joining HP in 2013, Neil trained and qualified as a Solicitor with national UK Law Firm Shoosmiths LLP in Reading, Berkshire, where he worked for almost 10 years and was one of the key team leaders of the Commercial Litigation Team.  Neil is a graduate of Cardiff University, Wales.

Neil is admitted as a Solicitor in England and Wales.

Bjarne P. Tellmann is Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Pearson PLC, the world’s leading education business. A FTSE 40 company with 40,000 employees in over 70 countries, Pearson provides a range of education products and services to institutions, governments and individual learners.  The company recently sold its media interests, including The Financial Times and The Economist, but retains an interest in consumer publishing as co-owner of Penguin Random House. At Pearson, Mr. Tellmann leads a global legal team of approximately 200 people across six continents.

Mr. Tellmann previously served in various capacities at The Coca-Cola Company, including Associate General Counsel, General Counsel Asia-Pacific and General Counsel Japan. Prior to that, he was Deputy General Counsel of Coca-Cola HBC, one of the world’s largest independent Coke bottling groups, with 550 million consumers in 28 countries spanning Russia, Eurasia, Europe and Africa. Mr. Tellmann has also held legal positions at Kimberly-Clark and at the law firms of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and White & Case LLP in various locations in Europe and the United States.

The Lawyer magazine recently named Mr. Tellmann as one of its “Hot 100” lawyers for 2015 and he was profiled in a cover article in the May 2015 edition of the same magazine.

He is a regular speaker, panelist and lecturer at conferences and universities in the United States and Europe.

Originally from Oslo, Norway, Mr. Tellmann is a member of the New York and Georgia Bars and is a qualified Solicitor in England and Wales. He holds a Juris Doctor with Honors from The University of Chicago, a M.Sc. (Econ.) from The London School of Economics and a PG Dip. with Merit in European Competition Law from King’s College, University of London. He received his B.A., Summa cum Laude from Boston University.

Lisa Gan Tomlins is the General Counsel at MADE.COM, a UK-headquartered online designer furniture retailer on a mission to make great design accessible to everyone. MADE.COM was selected as one of the initial 25 companies to join the UK government’s “Future Fifty” programme for high-growth tech businesses.  Lisa joined MADE.COM in December 2014 as its first lawyer.  Since then she has assumed responsibility for legal matters across all the territories in which MADE.COM operates, as well as helped execute in July 2015 a $60 million fundraising growth round to accelerate the company’s European expansion.

Previously, Lisa was a senior lawyer at JUST EAT, the world’s largest online takeaway business with a market cap of > £3 billion. Lisa was a key member of the team that successfully executed JUST EAT’s £387m IPO and London listing in April 2014.

Before moving in-house, Lisa spent almost 10 years in private practice in London and New York as a corporate/commercial lawyer with a particular focus on international capital markets transactions.  She practised at leading international law firms Cleary Gottlieb and Debevoise & Plimpton, and was also seconded to Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Legal department.

Lisa is a dual US/UK-qualified lawyer with a first class law degree from Cambridge University and a masters in law from New York University.

Dan has been Spire Healthcare’s General Counsel and Group Company Secretary since 2007, joining the business (which was then known as Bupa Hospitals) shortly before its acquisition by the private equity investor, Cinven and taking it through a period of growth and acquisition before floating the company on the London Stock Exchange in 2014. In that period Dan has also taken on responsibility for Company Secretarial and Risk Management, and now heads a team of 13 professionals and support staff. Dan and his team have won numerous awards, including the Legal 500 Healthcare Team of the Year 2015, The Lawyer Magazine In House Commerce and Industry Team of the Year 2013 and The Lawyer In House Lawyer of the Year 2012.

Dan previously worked in both private practice (most recently with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer), and in-house, and also spent time as a consultant to the Department of Health.

Ross Woodham is Director of Legal Affairs and Privacy Officer at Cogeco Peer 1, part of Cogeco Cable, Inc. (TSX:CCA) who are headquartered Montreal, Canada. His current role covers leadership of the legal team in the UK and the abuse department as well as spearheading the company’s privacy work.

Cogeco Peer 1 is a multi-national hosting company with datacenters located across the United States, Canada and the UK, with further points of presence in Europe. It provides colocation, managed and cloud hosting services to some of the world’s most respected and trusted household names.

Ross has been working with hosting providers, top-tier technology companies and their clients for over 9 years, first in private practice working for the IT and Technology team at Shoosmiths Solicitors and then later joining Cogeco Peer 1 as Head of Legal, UK and EMEA in 2012.

Verity is director of commercial contracts at Marks and Spencer plc, having joined in 2010. She is responsible for leadership of the in-house commercial legal team and supports M&S’ operations both in the UK and internationally. Since her appointment, Verity has commenced a series of initiatives to ensure M&S has a strong and effective commercial legal function. Verity works hard with her team to continually drive change and excellence in a fast moving retail environment.

Verity was listed as highly commended in the Rising Stars In-House Counsel of the Year 2014 and was cited as “one of the most widely praised lawyers in a well regarded in-house team for all-round board excellence, board level credibility and a keen sense of the wider imperatives of the business.”

Prior to joining M&S, Verity was a Legal Director at Wragge & Co (now Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co).

Ed trained at Pinsents and qualified into the corporate team in 1997.  In 1999 he joined Freshfields and spent two years working on large transactions and many smaller VC deals also.  He moved to BT Cellnet (now Telefonica UK, operating the O2 brand) in 2001 just prior to its demerger from BT plc, and he’s been there ever since, becoming General Counsel in 2011.  In his time with O2 Ed has been involved in a number of memorable deals, not least the deal with Apple which saw O2 introduce the iPhone to the UK and secure two years of exclusivity in 2007, and the original network sharing deal with Vodafone.

In 2013 Ed’s team picked up the Legal Business In House Team of the Year Award.

Sarah Nelson Smith is the European Legal Director at Kentucky Fried Chicken, with responsibility for the KFC brand in over 40 countries across Europe. Having trained at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Sarah worked with the US firm Baker Botts in international arbitration, before joining the Yum! legal team in May 2011. Sarah had responsibility for KFC and Pizza Hut in the UK and Ireland, before taking on the wider, European role for KFC. She leads a small in-house legal department, whilst playing an active role in the global Yum! legal team, comprised of over a hundred lawyers worldwide. Sarah won the title of In House Lawyer of the Year at the 2014 Lawyer Awards, and has spoken publically on, inter alia, franchising, managing and motivating an in-house legal team, delivering corporate culture and value, and threats and opportunities of trading in a complex global marketplace.