Australia and New Zealand Teams 2017
| Vend
Vend
Senior legal consultant | Element Fleet Management México
Head of legal and financial crime prevention | Lunar
Partner | Herbert Smith Freehills
Based in: London Years of practice: 20 Languages spoken: English, French and Arabic Leading Herbert Smith Freehills’ international arbitration group in London, Craig Tevendale is known amongst peers as a...
General counsel | Handelsbanken
Shifting the legal department from ‘reactive to pro-active in the years following a financial crisis in the banking industry in Denmark, has been a great challenge’, explains Svend Ulrik Riis,...
Chief legal officer - corporate M&A | CaixaBank
CaixaBank’s chief legal officer Lluis Vendrell Pi believes that assuming his current role has been the biggest challenge throughout his career, as he had to become a banking expert in...
| Vivendi
A Paris-headquartered mass media company with operations in numerous parts of the sector, Vivendi has several notable subsidiaries under its control. These include leading television operator Canal+ Group, film producers...
| Vivendi
Vivendi’s legal department is led by group general counsel Frédéric Crépin, an individual of immense experience who has been with the company for almost 20 years, having first joined in...
Director of legal affairs | Banco Ripley
An established specialist in civil, commercial and banking law, Leonor Avendaño Arana currently navigates the legal department of Banco Ripley in Perú, a leading provider of savings and current accounts,...
Auckland-based Vend is a high-growth, cloud-based point-of-sale software company that integrates with established online payment methods. An important corporate partner of the company is technology behemoth Apple, who named Vend as a key retail partner in its global mobility partner programme – testament to the esteem in which Vend’s services are held by the global technology community. Sabina Bickelmann founded the in-house legal function at Vend and is keen to stress the massive expansion the company has undertaken since its establishment in 2010: ‘The company now has customers in 160 countries and is continually growing at a rapid pace’. Bickelmann is well acquainted with high profile in-house legal work, having been a legal counsel for Pfizer in New Zealand for almost six years, prior to which she was an associate with international law firm Maples and Calder. She explains how she has ‘built the in-house legal function from the ground up, creating a compliance culture and embedding legal input into decision making’, and that specific highlights she recalls from her tenure include ‘developing a global IP strategy and working with leading companies like Apple, Xero and Paypal’. A recognised thought leader and specialist in the technology space, it is no surprise that Bickelmann describes how she is ‘passionate about innovation and the use of technology to drive efficiency gains within the legal function and wider business’. Her experience and ambition is indicative of a legal function that prizes talent and attainment in this high technology and relatively new sector, with big things still yet to come from Vend as they continue to grow and innovate in the market.
