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United Kingdom 2018: The Team Elite

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United Kingdom 2018: The Team Elite

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For Britain’s second-largest energy supplier, 2017 was a year of upheaval after it unveiled an ambitious merger with Npower. For GC Liz Tanner and her legal team, the combination threw up numerous challenges, not least reorganising the team. Stuart Waddell, previously SSE’s head of legal for wholesale and corporate, will become director of legal services on a 12-month interim basis while Tanner and the rest of the team manage the Npower merger. Such is the scale of the integration task, Tanner is required to give it her full attention. Before the merger-induced shuffle, Waddell was one of six legal heads reporting to Tanner, alongside disputes head Gaby Dosanjh-Pahil, networks head Mark McLaughlin, data protection head Janet Cursi, enterprise head Brian Sharma and retail head Laura McVean. There are legal ramifications as well, with Tanner pointing to the ongoing Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) review process into the tie-up. A trading update for the third quarter of 2017 revealed that SSE had been in ‘pre-notification discussions’ with the CMA, but that the merger ‘remains on course to be completed by the last quarter of 2018 or the first quarter of 2019.’ A distinctive feature of Tanner’s team is the prominent use of secondees. She says: ‘We find secondments really useful because they give the lawyers something new and different to do for a period of time. We are shuffling the deck a bit and allowing lawyers to step into roles on a project, then they can step back. It’s about getting a wider understanding of the commercial pressures clients are under. We ensure the lawyers are invited to meetings so it breaks down the barriers between the in-house team and external lawyers.’ Aside from standard legal work, she says that her in-house team has been aided by a fresh focus on technology. ‘We are halfway through a project implementing a new document-management system, which gives us great auditing ability and the ability to track advice. We will be using it for all of our property, litigation and commercial matters. The system, coupled with our new billing, means our lawyers can work in an agile way. They’ve got full visibility of all their records on their laptops, iPads and remote devices.’

 

 

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