Most of you can shut your eyes and easily visualise the moon. You’d be able to ‘see’ the ‘face’, the distinctive features that make our moon so recognisable to us. We all know what the moon looks like. But how often have you looked at the other side of the moon, the ‘dark side’? Continue reading “The dark side of the moon”
It’s mid-December when I pay a visit to John Lewis, and as I’m waiting in the foyer of the aptly named Partnership House, I notice that most head office staff are sporting Christmas jumpers. When senior commercial lawyer Amy Holt arrives to greet me, she too is decked out in festive knitwear – putting paid to any notions of stuffiness in the retail chain’s commercial legal team.
Continue reading “From client to colleague: the John Lewis partnership”
Debt and equity are the two options a company has when choosing how to finance itself. In debt financing, the business borrows money in some form without giving the lender any ownership rights in the company. The company issues bonds which can be bought and sold in the same way as shares. Unlike a share, which is equity in the business, a bond is essentially a loan with a fixed rate of interest.
Continue reading “The 5-minute financial analyst: financial markets”
Participants
Catherine McGregor, editor-in-chief, GC magazine
Orijit Das, European general counsel and vice president, Genpact
Sarah Davis, group commercial legal director, Guardian Media Group
Craig Stoehr, chief corporate officer and general counsel, Thomas Cook
David Webster, partner, RPC
Venue
Angler, South Place Hotel, London
This is a question posed by Jacques Barthélémy of Cabinet Barthélémy Avocats in Paris. He is writing in the 2014 European Company Lawyers Association [ECLA] white paper, which calls for all in-house lawyers in Europe to be recognised as independent professionals – and afforded the legal privilege enjoyed by their peers in private practice.
There’s an oft-quoted remark by Theodore Roosevelt saying, “Appraisals are where you get together with your team leader and agree what an outstanding member of the team you are, how much your contribution has been valued, what massive potential you have and, in recognition of all this, would you mind having your salary halved?”
Lawyers are commonly viewed as deal breakers who protect their clients right out of deals. General counsel would be wise not to dismiss this notion – justified or not – and we can to respond to it on multiple levels.
Businessweek gave Peter Drucker the moniker “the man who invented management”. He has long been considered one of the most influential management thinkers, and each year his namesake the Drucker Institute hosts a conference in Vienna that continues to attract the cream of business thinkers and leading CEOs. Legendary CEO Jack Welch of GE was highly influenced by Drucker’s work as were other major companies such as Ford, Dell and Toyota. Recently it has been suggested that many of the tech industry’s new generation of CEOs are also looking to Drucker’s thinking to inform their strategic direction. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly consulted many of Drucker’s principles in building Facebook from a start-up into the global brand it is today.
In the summer of 2008, Cambridge-based infrastructure software firm Autonomy Corporation [now HP Autonomy] began working on a US acquisition. A UK-listed public company, Autonomy had its eye on California-based software company Interwoven, and a deal valued at $775 million. Such a large takeover would require Autonomy to approach its institutional investors for funding, through a placing to raise £220 million, and to set up a new revolving credit facility of up to $200 million.
That’s quite a big question. I would argue “a lot”. If we accept that premise, then we can move on to a far more interesting discussion: how?