Working at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) wouldn’t suit every lawyer. If you yearn for walls spotted by Damien Hirst, encrusted with crackly oils of senior partners from days of yore or plastered with impassioned corporate values, you’d be disappointed. Desks groaning with gonks, or festooned with file boxes or framed pictures of you losing your lunch on the Corkscrew? Colour, of any kind? Ha, you wish. The overall effect is a little, er, Spartan.
A fundamental principle for multi-national companies is compliance with the law of all nations where they do business. But a recurrent dilemma is what to do when a corporation’s global ethical standards (‘oppose censorship’ for a global media company) collides with national law (China’s extensive state censorship). As companies globalize and nations regulate ever more, this vexatious problem is not esoteric, but recurring. Most companies make voluntary decisions to adopt ethical standards beyond what formal legal and financial rules mandate. A decision that a company’s global ethical standards conflict with national law raises a range of options: obey the law; be civilly disobedient (a very uncomfortable, often untenable, position for global companies dedicated to rule of law); try to change the law; or stop doing business in that nation. Continue reading “The conflict between a corporation’s global standards and national law”
Gregory Bopp – Managing partner, Bracewell LLP
David DeVeau – General counsel, Kinder Morgan Inc.
Jeffrey Kaplan – General counsel, LyondellBasell
Susan Lindberg – General counsel, Eni US Operating Co.
Inc. and head of the Americas Region legal department of Italian-based Eni SpA
Catherine McGregor – GC Magazine
What is considered important professional ‘news’ for an in-house lawyer? Sure, many will see the changing legal landscape as news, scanning diligently the usual array of legal industry journals on a daily basis. But what other sources do you use to gather your news from? For that matter, what even is news? Continue reading “Who do you need to be?”
There’s change afoot out there in the world, a world in which any remaining Luddites can no longer sit with their hands over their ears in a state of denial. We are in a period of digital technology which is so disruptive that the only thing that comes close to it in human history has been the first industrial revolution. That movement overturned the trajectory humans had been on through various contemporaneous developments in mechanical engineering, chemistry, metallurgy, and other disciplines, and its advancements altered the landscape of human history. Our digital revolution will effectively lay waste to that landscape created by the first industrial revolution and something entirely new will have to take its place.
Continue reading “Ghost in the machine: AI, law, ethics – what does it mean for you?”
When I joined ICTSI two and a half years ago as their first GC, we recruited additional in-house counsel around the globe. One of the biggest challenges remains the different time zones. When we open for business in Manila on a Tuesday morning, our colleagues in Latin America are getting ready for dinner on their Monday evening, but with planning, continuous communication and frequent meetings, this can be managed.
Continue reading “In-house life: Ton van den Bosch, International Container Terminal Services, Inc.”
This Spring, GC magazine and RPC teamed up for a series of innovative events bringing provocative, and often downright maverick, business perspectives to an audience of in-house lawyers in London.
‘I have relied upon lawyers so much in my commercial career; it is important you understand how much your peer group have bailed me out of the crap I have found myself in, accidentally or otherwise. I want to highlight the attributes I think are remarkable (and also those that are unhelpful) in steering a company towards success.
Tim Murphy has worked for MasterCard for 16 years. Starting out as an in-house lawyer, he then spent over ten years in non-legal business roles, serving as president of the U.S. region and chief product officer. In 2014, he stepped back into legal to assume the mantle of general counsel. In the second of a two-part interview, GC caught up with him to hear how the integration of the legal and business teams are impacting the company’s programmes.
Broadly speaking, the economies of Asia comprise the largest financial and population bloc in the world. Throughout the Global Financial Crisis, many of Asia’s strongest economies remained surprisingly resilient, thanks in no small part to the staggering growth rates China sustained throughout the period.