About

The Irish legal team at Glanbia, the global performance nutrition and ingredients group, is led by group general counsel Michael O’Hara and consists of three lawyers and one paralegal. Key projects undertaken in recent years have included acquisitions and disposals of businesses and working on a €100m exchangeable bond (the first to list in Dublin). In 2015 Glanbia continued its programme of organic and external investments to drive growth, investing €283m in acquisitions and strategic capital expenditure programmes. In the last two years the team has reduced reliance on external lawyers within Ireland, bringing litigation in-house and running court cases, including prosecuting and defending injunctions. The legal team was central to the setting up of Glanbia Ingredients Ireland (a joint venture between Glanbia Co-op and Glanbia plc), which is the largest processor of milk in Ireland. Like many in-house legal teams, there is always a battle with their work load, but despite this the Glanbia team have adopted methods to overcome this challenge. They successfully helped shape major strategic initiatives within the Irish businesses, and advised on the disposal of a substantial international business unit without using external lawyers. Displaying the high regard their advice is held in, the legal team interacts across multiple levels of management within business units internationally and at group level.