About

Team size: 18

Major legal advisers: Allen & Overy; Dentons; Bird & Bird; Stobbs

What are the most important transactions, litigations or other major projects that you have been involved in during the last year?

It’s been a strong year for the team. We met the challenges of a hugely turbulent period, navigating the legal complexities of being an ‘essential retailer’ in a pandemic, and we also played an integral role supporting the growth of the business by launching new partnerships and joint ventures. The first and most high profile was the team’s efforts to launch M&S food online for the first time through our new Ocado joint venture. We also launched the ‘Brands at M&S’ offer, including online propositions. This meant negotiating brand acquisitions like Jaeger and adding other collaborations, consignments and wholesale models with third parties. We continued to create and deliver innovative and market leading projects despite the ongoing impact of the pandemic. We introduced a managed legal service with Dentons LLP, which to everyone’s credit was designed and launched entirely by remote. The efficiency gains are already starting to come in with business colleagues able to self-serve and to drive outcomes from standard negotiation playbooks.

We held M&S’ first fully digital AGM and continue to press for reform so this becomes the norm. In a year where many were forced to hold their AGMs behind closed doors, M&S felt it more important than ever to communicate with shareholders. We also generated a few headlines with the Colin v Cuthbert claim. Twitter was light-hearted but we were happy to be protecting our IP.

There have been a number of legislative changes in response to Covid. Have these benefited your company or had any other interesting effects?

This has been, and continues to be, a very fast moving and continually changing landscape and the legal team helped the business respond rapidly throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, keeping our stores safe for both colleagues and customers, and open to trade. The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) Regulations 2020 have had a good read here; not forgetting each of the devolved administrations legislated in their own separate ways to create a complex picture for a national retailer. The legal team worked hand in hand with colleagues to forge a strong working relationship with our Primary Authority for Health and Safety, who gave us invaluable support and assurance to make sure we operated within the fast-changing legal framework. From social distancing, to face masks, to understanding just what was considered ‘essential retail’; we covered it all.

What were the main difficulties your company faced during the initial Covid lockdown?

First and foremost, we had to keep our shops open to ensure vital supply of food and groceries. And we were determined to do that in a way which ensured the health, safety, and welfare of our colleagues and customers. As part of this initiative, the legal team facilitated cross-industry working to ensure food remained available and shelves stocked across the whole country. We issued competition law guidance to be sure industry-wide collaboration happened and bureaucracy didn’t impede. Our attention quickly turned to M&S’ international supply chain, where we protected our long-term suppliers with special payment terms. We also had to move our supply from Southeast Asia to Turkey to guarantee continuity of product flow – little did we know just how long the pandemic was going to last. You can only imagine how many conversations we had on the topic of ‘force majeure’.

Having ensured the safety of our colleagues and customers, and the continuation of our operations, attention turned to the company’s balance sheet. We re-negotiated M&S’ revolving credit facility and assisted the treasury team with an application to the Bank of England’s Covid Corporate Financing Facility. The board then suspended payment of our dividend, in the long-term interests of M&S’ transformation, and we issued the necessary RNS. Once the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme was announced, the legal team supported the necessary applications with 25,000 colleagues gradually placed on furlough with full pay. We implemented schemes to reward the hard work of our front-line colleagues through a 15% uplift and introduced a one-off equity scheme to thank support centre colleagues who help stores throughout the pandemic.

Did the Brexit deal reached at the end of 2020 give you and your business greater clarity for the future?

M&S is one of the largest UK based retailers operating in Ireland as a whole and we play a disproportionate role in Northern Ireland given our high market share there. However, the issues we are facing as a direct result of the current customs arrangements and compliance regime are very threatening to our business. The Protocol is currently set up to fail because of the way it is being implemented – these arrangements were never designed for a modern fresh food supply chain between close trading partners and serve no purpose in terms of food safety and customer protection. We are continuing to press the government and EU Commission to resolve these problems as we do not have clarity for the future.

Are there any other of your achievements over the past 18 months that you’d like to mention?

I couldn’t have done it without such a great team. It was really important to nurture our team spirit through such a turbulent time. We’ve launched a programme called ‘Unlocking Your Brilliance’ using internal workshops and external coaching to help all of our lawyers better understand themselves and each other. The focus is on developing everyone’s emotional intelligence, driving their creativity and helping them become even better business partners.