Team Members In Ireland: Gareth Byrne (General counsel), Laura O’Driscoll, Michelle Hughes

What are the most significant cases or transactions your legal team has been involved in?  

For context, the concept of travel retail was born over 75 years ago when Aer Rianta opened the first duty free at Shannon Airport in 1947. This pioneering spirit remains a driver of our business today and we now operate across 14 countries and 27 cities around the world.

A big standout moment for us was winning the tender to operate duty free and duty paid retail across all Portuguese Airports in early 2022. When we were awarded the contract, the next step was to set up a joint venture with the airport operator which involved navigating, and finally obtaining, various regulatory and Competition Authority approvals.  To add an extra layer of complexity, we were required to commence our tenure just 3 months after winning the tender. Once this new entity was formed and agreements signed, we had to navigate a huge number of contracts, the acquisition of stock and assets from the previous incumbent, the transfer of over 600 employees to the new Portugal Duty Free and many complex competition law aspects – all within a very short timeframe. It was a huge challenge for the team, but a lot of hard work paid off to launch the project on time and to great success on 1 June 2022.   A special call out must be give to Laura O’Driscoll who was our lead lawyer on the Portuguese Project and ensured that all of the legal obstacles were overcome on-time to ensure a successful bid (and implementation).

What has been the number one challenge that has impacted your team over the past year? 

When I joined ARI in 2019, my priority was to fully immerse myself and the team in the business in order to truly understand it, and for the team to be welcomed by colleagues across the ARI global estate as business partners (and not an extension of external counsel). This hasn’t been without its challenges – my team are all relatively new to ARI and shortly after I joined the business, COVID hit. Much of the ensuing period was filled with more ‘firefighting’ than immersion, as our industry was really crushed by the pandemic travel restrictions and airport closures, and this continued on during 2022.

As we have now returned to “business as usual” with the lifting of international travel restrictions, immersing ourselves in all aspects of our complex business is once again a priority for the entire team. The additional challenge is the fact that we operate across 14 jurisdictions (from Auckland to Canada, and many parts in between, including a significant portfolio in the Middle East).  For a lean team like ours, it is challenging to be so immersive in each business unit and understand each business unit’s operations (including opportunities and challenges) whilst still providing the proactive and strategic advice we strive to provide.  It’s also essential that every member of the team has the broadest breadth of legal knowledge and experience across these 14 jurisdictions.

Has the increasing consciousness of climate change impacted your team and its priorities at all? 

Absolutely – it has impacted our entire business and it’s something we take very seriously, along with our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (“DE&I”) commitments. Our ESG strategy was developed by ARI’s Executive Team based off the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and sets out clear objectives and targets for our global business in terms of climate action and sustainability.

A challenge for us is that every location within ARI’s global estate is at a different stage in terms of their ESG journey, so we have worked hard to create inclusive objectives that we can meet collectively each year.

It’s not just climate change and environmental consciousness having an impact on the team – diversity and inclusion is a hugely important focus for us and perhaps one that is not spoken about enough. I am the executive sponsor for DE&I at ARI and I work alongside my colleague, Nuno Amaral as executive sponsor for ESG, to implement these strategies across the business.