About

Team size: 12
Major law firms used: Bird & Bird, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang, Pinsent Masons

The remit of Skyscanner chief legal officer Carolyn Jameson inevitably expanded following the travel metasearch engine’s £1.4bn acquisition by Chinese online travel giant ctrip.com in 2016. But having stepped down from her role after six years at the start of 2019, it will be time for her to hand over the reins as the Scotland-based company embarks on a strategic shift, likely taking payments directly rather than simply referring customers on. Jameson will remain at Skyscanner as an adviser until the end of April.

‘It’s all about how we start offering customer service,’ she says. ‘That has become a massive project and taken up quite a lot of time for us.’ The catalyst has been that acquisition by ctrip, already the second-largest online travel agency in the world, and the subsequent companies it has bought – such as Trip.com in late 2017 – as the Chinese company seeks a bigger international footprint.

Jameson and her team of 12, up from eight about a year ago, work directly with the parent company on any of its M&A work outside of China. Jameson describes the Trip.com acquisition as complex, and involving splitting assets between Skyscanner and ctrip. The strategic shift will see the two companies more directly collaborate, with Skyscanner establishing an Edinburgh call centre for ctrip, which will in turn provide customer service support for Skyscanner.

‘We operate independently and need to maintain that independence: it’s almost like you’re negotiating with your parent company.’ Almost all matters are dealt with internally, due to the specialist knowledge of the business Jameson believes is required. Building the appropriate internal relationships has become more difficult, however, as the company has grown to more than 1,300 employees.

Customer service and taking payments from customers directly, and the regulatory hurdles around that, will dominate Skyscanner’s legal workload for the foreseeable future, however. A European Commission package-travel directive in 2017 stipulated that such a model would require the ability to put people’s money in a separate place, provide refunds and flight cancellation protocol. ‘Skyscanner has not had to deal with any of that complexity; it’s just been a referral model. If you then add customer service to that as well, it’s becomes quite a different beast.’