As the head: legal and insurance for Life Healthcare Group, nominating sources indicate Mark Stafford as bringing ‘formidable commercial knowledge and experience’ to the legal department at a company where he has been for almost ten years.

The Life Healthcare Group, a Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed top 40 company with a market capital of £2.5bn, is a diversified private healthcare company that has operations in Southern Africa, India, Poland, the United Kingdom and five other European countries. As well as his legal role, Stafford serves as a non-executive director on a number of the Group’s subsidiary companies, and his five-strong legal team supports the entire group and has been widely recognised as one of the nation’s leading in-house legal functions, praised particularly for its innovative approach. Stafford encourages the legal team to maintain extremely strong ties with the executive management of the Group, while he sits as a member of the strategic leadership group, which is located at one of the top levels of the Group’s structure.

Most recently in 2016 and 2017, Stafford and his team managed the legal requirements in relation to the acquisition by the Group of the Alliance Medical Group Limited, which was based on an enterprise value of £800m. Linked to the funding requirements in regards to this acquisition, Stafford was also involved with the successful equity raise by the Group on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for an amount equivalent of approximately £540m.

Recognised by peers for his approach and all-rounded involvement in all processes, one nominator highlights his combination of ‘excellent judgment in relation to the merits of any legal matter with an appropriate mixture of firmness and flexibility’, which has ‘seen him guide his organisation through a decade of excellent results in matters, whilst at the same time growing a dedicated team of legal professionals who are trusted to perform their roles without interference’.