About

Having trained at Matheson, David O’Brien spent time in private practice with A&L Goodbody and William Fry to further his education and experience in corporate M&A. Then the opportunity to go in-house arose and he joined Horizon Pharma (now Horizon Therapeutics), a pharmaceutical company where he had a role which incorporated multijurisdictional corporate governance, commercial contracts, and M&A work including the acquisition of Raptor Pharmaceuticals for US$800m. Following this O’Brien joined Ardagh Group in April 2017, his current role, where he is solely responsible for legal matters and corporate governance in Ireland, UK, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Latvia and Switzerland, in addition to commercial contracts including procurement and IT contracts and general legal matters arising in those jurisdictions. Over his time at Ardagh O’Brien has implemented new policies and changes to the company’s workings. He identifies that his, ‘introduction of global general terms and conditions for procurement has allowed the company to streamline the contracting process involved in these contracts. This will save both the procurement and legal teams time in terms of contractual reviews’.