About

Georgia Magno is a dual qualified lawyer, having been admitted to the bar in Italy and the US with hands-on experience in civil law and common law jurisdiction around the globe. Magno joined GE Oil & Gas in April 2010, first as senior counsel for global supply chain, then as executive counsel for global supply chain and global commercial operations and then since 2017 as senior executive and general counsel of the Turbomachinery and Process Solutions (TPS) business, a division of GE’s oil and gas business, known as BHGE. Magno was instrumental to the merger that resulted in the creation of BHGE, joining the global oil and gas businesses of GE and Baker Hughes. According to Magno, the deal proved to be extremely complex and involved the creation of a new publicly traded company, Baker Hughes, a GE company, of which GE holds 62.5% of the shares. In her current role she oversees the multibillion-dollar legal and compliance operations of the TPS enterprise, which operates in more than 100 countries and has more than 12,000 employees. Over the years she has made substantive process changes to the legal and compliance operations of BHGE, creating new, standardised and often digital processes for all major operations, streamlining and creating key efficiencies in the provision of legal support, and insisting on empowering the front-line and simplifying the company’s activities. However, above everything, Magno is proud of having created and continuously fostered an ‘outstanding’ team of lawyers who operate as true leaders and business partners and who are instrumental in enabling the business’s growth and success. Magno believes that the most important part of her job is the investment in the world-class team she has selected and has the pleasure of leading, as well as coaching them and shaping them as leaders and business partners. As a testament of her excellent leadership qualities, all of the lawyers in her team sit on the staff of a senior leader in the company and participate in strategic decisions and planning, constantly getting recognised by the business for their invaluable support. ‘After eight years as an in-house counsel I believe I have become a leader, in addition to being a lawyer. I understand the business, I value the importance of innovation, risk-taking and globalisation, and I work with the rest of the legal team to enable to business to pursue its global growth in a compliant and sustainable way and with a constant focus on environmental, health and safety standards as well as quality and corporate social responsibility’ says Magno. She has negotiated numerous complex agreements for the sale of highly engineered equipment to be used in the oil and gas industry. An example was when she was the lead lawyer negotiating the sale of groundbreaking BHGE technology and long-term aftermarket services for a Canadian LNG project, which is operated by a joint venture including Shell, Mitsubishi and other global companies. Before joining GE, Magno worked as a litigation attorney in New York and Rome, specialising in securities and corporate governance as well as general international litigation and arbitration, providing advice in connection with derivative and class actions, multibillion-dollar bankruptcy litigations, as well as merger-related disputes.