Lloyds Banking Group GC Kate Cheetham is a frequently-cited name in the in-house community, and her legal team has received similar commendations after a strong year characterised by shrewd deals and fierce litigation. The group comprises six different GC-led teams – three centralised teams: transformation, group legal and group litigation, and three customer-facing teams: retail, insurance and commercial banking. The retail legal team, headed up by deputy GC Jennifer Nielsen, was heavily involved in Lloyds’ £1.9bn takeover of credit card firm MBNA from Bank of America in June last year. The deal reportedly increased Lloyds’ share of the credit card market from 15% to 26% and was the first acquisition it had made since the economic crisis in a sign of the bank’s increasing confidence. Tom Spender, GC in charge of litigation, was well occupied in 2017 by the high-profile HBOS dispute. The £600m case was brought by 5,800 investors to the High Court, after they alleged that Lloyds’ decision to acquire HBOS during the banking crisis was disastrous for investors. Overall, Lloyds set aside £865m in litigation provision in 2017, an indicator of how prevalent disputes were. Lloyds is another major corporate embracing the deployment of legal operations professionals, with the bank boasting an eight-strong team that covers finances, resource planning and relationships with external law firms. Several of the legal ops team are non-lawyers. ‘They’re the glue that holds the legal team together,’ says Cheetham. Dentons partner Paul Holland singles out head of legal for commercial banking Jon Alexander for praise: ‘He has a good track record which is not easy at a bank. He is innovative and open to new ideas. He does what he says he’s going to do. He understands what is required of in-house counsel and always has the interests of the bank in all decisions.’