About

Ashe-lee Jegathesan assumed her current position as general counsel and company secretary of Vocus Group in February 2016, following the successful merger of Vocus Group and M2 Group. Prior to this, she had a long career in private practice and as legal counsel and general counsel in the IT sector, specifically at Melbourne IT and Nortel Networks. She held the position of general counsel and company secretary for the M2 Group, a role she held since 2014, and was appointed to the role for the combined entities from the date of the merger completion. She leads a team of 11professionals in the legal and risk area, and 22 people in the human resources function.

Jegathesan is experienced in leading these functions through the journey of growth and the “merger of equals” and working through not just legal issues, but the governance issues of integrating the organisations in a unique and challenging situation. She identifies that these ‘have certainly helped me develop a better appreciation of the strategic value that I can contribute and helped me further strengthen my problem solving “fixer” and influencing skills to help lead the board and executive team through the change and refresh process’. During her tenure she has transitioned the legal team from a functional service provider to a trusted advisor, introduced metrics that are directly referable to the key metrics the business units are measured by. These valuable metrics relating to financial performance, customer satisfaction, contribution to customer acquisition, achievement of strategic objectives and she has also introduced a workflow automation and legal technology tools that empower the business to move faster, make decisions within frameworks and guidelines and support the faster generation of revenue from signing.

These changes have achieved a structural alignment of legal team with the business’ needs and requirements, to better enable the delivery of corporate strategy. In terms of output, Jegathesan has led on approximately 16 acquisition transactions of businesses ranging from US$10m to US$500m over an 18 month period, followed by a “merger of equals” of two companies, to form the fourth largest telecoms company in Australia and the third largest telecom company in New Zealand with a market cap of US$3.6bn. She also oversaw the legal elements of the construction of two significant undersea cables projects – Australia Singapore Cable, from Perth to Jakarta and then to Singapore, and the recently announced Solomon Islands-Papua New Guinea undersea cable from Australia. In addition, over the past 12 months, Jegathesan has also had executive oversight of the Group HR function for 1,700 staff members in Australia, and 600 in New Zealand.