About

Team size: 75

Major legal advisers: Bird & Bird, Clifford Chance, CMS, DLA Piper, Norton Rose Fulbright

Maaike de Bie has earned a reputation as a pioneering general counsel (GC) adept at both transforming and evolving in-house legal teams as well as guiding companies through wide-ranging change.

De Bie ended her five-year tenure at Royal Mail in 2019, during which the company went through an initial public offering; she was promoted from deputy to GC and nearly doubled her team’s headcount; and established an internal training academy to school junior lawyers on soft skills, such as networking and leadership, in addition to traditional legal training.

Since joining easyJet, however, her role and the issues she faces have broadened. De Bie leads a team of 75 across multiple functions and took on the position of company secretary, with a remit that includes regulatory and policy, data and information security, and claims handling.

‘We’ve spent the last six months getting everyone together to find a common purpose: “Why do we show up every day?”’ she comments. ‘These things don’t happen overnight, particularly when you’re finding time to do it because the day job is already incredibly busy, but bringing people together and collaborating is when you get great ideas and innovation.’

Since joining easyJet, de Bie has been part of a number of transformative projects: in November the company became the first major airline in the world to announce it would be offsetting all of the carbon emissions from the fuel on its flights, while also launching a package holiday business in the wake of the Thomas Cook collapse.

The team has been involved in lobbying in Europe regarding the proposed introduction of eco taxes, as the airline industry faces intense public scrutiny for its carbon footprint. ‘We are hoping to drive the industry into a better place,’ de Bie comments. ‘There is currently no viable (carbon-free) alternative, but we didn’t want to wait so we figured the best thing we can do today is offset the carbon we emit from the fuel we use when we fly. This will be an interim step, whilst we focus on developing viable alternatives. Carbon-offsetting doesn’t necessarily have the best reputation, so we needed to make sure that everything we did and said we did was absolutely accurate and credible. We’ll continue to research and implement other ways to reduce emissions, such as removing weight from our aircraft and we’re already championing the development of electric technology.’

Similar to her time at Royal Mail, de Bie has hired an operations professional for the function, Helen Lowe, and will look to refresh the company’s adviser panel this year. She is also introducing a legal training academy at easyJet and is involved in the O-Shaped Lawyer project led by Network Rail’s Dan Kayne (see interview, page 86).