About

With an impressive career spanning senior in-house positions and private practice, David Giner leads a cross-functional 15-strong team that provides support to a €6bn telecoms business, operating in over 40 countries and with service reach in over 170 countries. Prior to his role in Telefónica, Giner was an associate and partner at the top Spanish law firms Bufete Armero and Uría & Menéndez. He joined Telefónica in 2001 as head of alliances and acquisitions, where he headed the acquisitions of the operations in Mexico and the Czech Republic and since then has been through a number of senior roles within the organisation. At the moment he heads the legal team that advises Telefónica Business Solutions, which coordinates all Telefónica’s business-to-business activities at a global level. Giner concedes the step up to head of legal was one of the biggest challenges of his career. ‘Coming from external counsel practice, I really had no skills in team management, as dynamics in an in-house team are quite different from those in a law firm. Back in 2006, when I was appointed as head of commercial law for Telefónica Group, I inherited a group of people sitting around the same area, but without being a formal team they had no clear idea of how to drive together in the right direction’ he says. ‘I concentrated on people’s management and took internal and external training, including certifying myself as an executive coach. I’m proud to say that following that, our unit’s internal satisfaction index started to grow dramatically, and in 2009 and 2010 our indexes were the highest in Telefónica’s legal organisation and corporate areas’. Always looking to optimise processes, Giner introduced a number of innovative policies that revolutionised the legal departments he headed. He put in place a new contract management process and system, making Telefónica one of the few top Spanish companies that do not use a mass market solution, but a proprietary system that was built in-house. Aside from the Telefónica Group operations, Giner is secretary to the board of directors of Equilibria Investments SIL S.A., a registered hedge fund.