The In-House Lawyer (IHL): Eighteen months in the group general counsel role, what have been some of the key projects you’ve been doing since you landed? The wider business has been through a lot of transformation, how is legal keeping up? Sabine Chalmers (SC), group GC, BT: When I joined Gavin Patterson was my boss. …
In the last five years, some Brazilian companies became well known internationally due to their involvement in some of the world’s largest corruption schemes. As contradictory as it may seem, some of the companies involved in these scandals were highly regarded for their compliance rules and/or were listed in the Novo Mercado segment (which means …
Continue reading “Corporate governance and compliance: two sides of the same coin”
Corporate governance is slowly but surely being implemented in Indonesia. The typical form of corporate/business organisation in Indonesia is a limited liability company, but other forms are available, including co-operatives, representative offices and partnerships. But since the limited liability company is by far the most common form of corporate organisation, in principle, corporate governance is …
After 40 years of economic reforms and intense development in China, the economic landscape has matured. Foreign investment legislation in China sits on the cusp of a new era, in which reforms will pave the way for significant improvement, including corporate governance in foreign entities. Although, today foreign companies in China still face challenges in …
Continue reading “Challenges and changes in corporate governance within China”
Two-key principle The opportunity to appoint two or more directors in a company, who exercise their authority jointly or severally, has been available in many foreign jurisdictions for a long time. However, until 2014 Russian law stuck to the approach that only one person may hold the position of CEO and be indicated as CEO …
Continue reading “Corporate governance in Russia: the two-key principle and director liability”
In Mexico, corporate governance best practices have been part of the business environment for the last 20 years. Since 1999, following the OECD Principles (which in turn used the recommendations of the Cadbury Report to varying degrees), the first voluntary Mexican Best Corporate Practices Code (CMPC), issued by the Mexican Business Co-ordinator Council was published. …
It’s not often a FTSE 100 GC and a law firm offer themselves up to the media to discuss a deal. Even panel review stories rarely elicit comment beyond a few contrived lines about ‘innovation’, ‘alignment’ and ‘deeper relationships’. So when BT legal chief Sabine Chalmers and DWF arranged conference calls in the summer to …
Continue reading “Outsourcing legal teams – Will it ever be more than flavour of the month?”
National Grid drops three from panel BDB Pitmans, Irwin Mitchell and Norton Rose Fulbright have been dropped from National Grid’s panel, understood to be worth about £12m a year in the UK. Womble Bond Dickinson is the sole new appointee on a roster that reduced the number of advisers from 12 to ten. Addleshaw Goddard, …
‘One reason I’m doing this interview is so I can send it to my parents. They’re really important to me. Ah, suddenly, the hard-woman persona crumbles,’ jokes Heather Mitchell, global general counsel (GC) for investments and head of EMEA at The Carlyle Group.
Recent years have seen an unprecedented focus on audit and auditors in the UK. This has been driven, at least in part, by a number of high-profile corporate failures as well as the perceived widening of the ‘audit expectations gap’, the difference between what users expect from an audit and the reality of what an …
Continue reading “Reforms to the audit market – major changes ahead”
Matthew Scully, Clifford Chance: There are two things that I wanted to touch on: first, whether there is such a thing as a good culture – I would say there is no one good corporate culture for all businesses but there are perhaps some basic common features – and, second, the notion of ‘tone from …
Alex Novarese, The In-House Lawyer: It has been a record period for Asian activity into Europe. How do you see the general trends? Abhijit Mukhopadhyay, Hinduja Group: China is an issue, because the main difference between the Asian companies, European companies and Chinese companies is that Chinese companies are directly or indirectly state-owned. The second …