It was a year of significant development for Thomas Cook, with GC Alice Marsden expanding the size of her legal team from 45 to 52 during 2017. Her group legal team in London is split across practice areas, a system Marsden describes as ‘like a law firm’. Elsewhere, the legal team is split by geography and business function. Thomas Cook’s heads of legal sit beneath Marsden and cover continental Europe, the Nordics and the UK, and the areas of corporate finance, group airlines, Thomas Cook Money, and hotels and resorts. Recently-promoted head of legal for group airlines, Silke Schober, oversaw a major transaction in 2017, as the company sold Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium to two companies: Brussels Airlines and VLM Airlines. The deal saw 160 pilots and cabin crew, flight slots and two aircraft transfer to Brussels Airlines, with the remaining three aircraft being used elsewhere within the Thomas Cook business. Marsden also highlights group head of compliance James Kelly, who worked on the strategic alliance Thomas Cook announced with fellow travel company Expedia in September. The agreement saw Expedia become Thomas Cook’s preferred provider of hotels for complementary, city and domestic holidays. For customers, it means an additional 60,000 hotels on offer. The partnership also allows Thomas Cook to advertise its core package holidays via Expedia’s website, expanding its distribution. Despite the significance of these two mandates, arguably Thomas Cook’s standout performer in 2017 was newly-appointed UK head of legal Stuart MacGregor, who added around 20 people to his team and dealt with a wave of bogus holiday-sickness claims. This came to a head last October, with MacGregor involved in a case that saw two Britons sent to prison for making false insurance claims against Thomas Cook. Marsden says: ‘He’s been so inundated with them that he said to me “I feel like I haven’t achieved anything you wanted me to in my first year”. When it was really hitting its peak it was unbelievable. We used to receive a small number of claims a month, but at that time we were receiving claims in the thousands.’ A new document management system and contract automation software are on Marsden’s wish list. She declares: ‘This year we are going to focus on tech.’