About

Mark Maurice-Jones, general counsel and compliance officer UK and Ireland at Nestlé, began his position in May 2015 after serving in a number of roles since 1999 at Kimberly-Clark including latterly EMEA associate general counsel. He had previously worked in private practice with Herbert Smith Freehills and trained at Lovell White Durrant (now Hogan Lovells) from 1992. In his current role Maurice-Jones has worked on building a compliance programme with the focus being on leadership and ethics, which he explains, ‘has helped emphasise the importance of doing what is right and not just is legal…working and leading legal teams in different jurisdictions has helped sensitise me to cultural differences and the importance of diversity and inclusion’. He has restructured the legal organisation in the UK and Ireland to move to, what he calls a, ‘one-stop-shop’ where each lawyer in the team is fully dedicated to supporting a particular business division. As part of this change each divisional leadership team includes a member of the legal team. This involved getting senior leaders actively involved in driving the Nestlé compliance programme and has led to compliance being seen not just as the responsibility of functions such as legal but as a key element of business strategy. As a consequence of these initiatives the legal department is seen as a business partner that is helping to shape the business strategy. In 2018 Nestlé and Starbucks announced a US$7bn transaction granting Nestlé the perpetual rights to market Starbucks consumer packaged goods and foodservice products globally, outside of the company’s coffee shops. Maurice-Jones led the EMENA legal integration exercise flowing out of this. His team along with colleagues in the central trademark department were involved in the high profile litigation relating to trademark rights in the shape of the Nestlé four finger KitKat product. The matter was heard before the European Court of Justice and English Court of Appeal and was widely reported.