United Kingdom 2018: The Team Elite
| Uber
Uber
Legal counsel manager Caricam | Unilever Caribe
General counsel | Banco Ripley
Senior legal counsel | Flughafen Wien
General Counsel and head of compliance and audit for Latin America | Panasonic Latin America
Group general counsel and chief compliance officer | SIG Group
Head of legal | Remgro
Luche Joubert is a corporate legal executive with a career that spans 27 years. He spent 16 years working for UK listed multinational, British American Tobacco, in various legal jurisdictions...
Legal manager greater Caribbean | Unilever
General counsel | Banco Ripley
General Counsel and head of compliance and audit for Latin America | Panasonic Latin America
General counsel | Sunrise
Senior vice president, group general counsel and chief compliance officer | SIG Group
Philippe Huber is an accomplished legal and compliance executive with extensive experience and expertise in multi-jurisdictional matters. After spending many years in private practice in Zurich and London, he joined...
Group general counsel and group head of legal and compliance | IDFC - Infrastructure Development Finance Company
General counsel, chief compliance officer and corporate secretary | Grupo Automotores Gildemeister
Legal manager Caribbean | Unilever
Legal Counsel | Niras
Vice president, group general counsel and chief compliance officer | SIG Combibloc Group
Executive vice president, general counsel and secretary | Abbott Laboratories
Team size: 92 Major legal advisers: Blackstone Chambers, Covington & Burling, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Herbert Smith Freehills, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Hogan Lovells, NautaDutilh Ridesharing giant Uber has arguably been...
| Uber
Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? As a mega region, there is a division by sub regions...
Senior vice president, legal affairs, general counsel and secretary | eBay
Marie Oh Huber took on her role with eBay at a pivotal time for the company, providing an immediate challenge for her which she relished: ‘When I joined eBay, the...
Executive vice president, global general counsel, corporate secretary and chief compliance officer | Gap
Julie Gruber has amassed an extremely detailed knowledge of Gap’s operations over the course of an extremely long and successful tenure with the global clothing titan. Joining the company in...
General Counsel & Corporate Secretary | Salt Mobile SA
Marcel has an abundance of passion for his role and says ‘I love my job and see it as privilege for a lawyer to be in charge with a wide...
Senior Associate General Counsel, Corporate Secretary | Transocean Ltd.
In charge of a team of attorneys in different locations across Switzerland for one of the world’s largest offshore drilling contractors, Philippe Huber has dealt with a huge range of...
| Uber
Over the last four years Uber has developed a major presence in Mexico, with a strong in-house legal team at the heart of the ride hire company’s expansion in the...
Group general counsel and group head of legal and compiance | Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC)
Dr Rajeev Uberoi is one of India’s most respected banking and finance lawyers. A specialist in operational risk management with more than 30 years’ experience in the financial services sector,...
| Uber
United States headquartered technology company Uber has invested in its Brazilian legal function as it caters for a surge in customer demand following its successful 2014 entry into the Latin...
Chief of corporate affairs and general counsel | Salt Mobile
Telecommunications lawyer, Marcel Huber has broad experience and a strong record of accomplishments in the fields of IT law, corporate law, competition law, copyright law, data protection, legal management M&A...
Chief general counsel | IDFC (Infrastructure Development Finance Company)
As chief general counsel at IDFC, Rajeev Uberoi has an important responsibility of serving the company as general counsel and group head of legal and compliance. He joined IDFC in...
| Uber
The rapid expansion and success of Uber has seen it become an integral part of the transport landscape of many European cities, but historically Germany has been a market where...
| Uber
Uber is world famous for its point to point ride service, digital and mobile platform for calling “rides”, and its other technologically innovative services such as Uber Eats. The company’s...
| Uber Colombia
Uber’s legal team in the Andean region (Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia) is led by Sandra Monroy. Monroy joined the company in October 2018 as legal director of the Andean...
| Uber
Uber’s legal team in Hong Kong has 11 members and is led by Andrew Janis, serving as head of legal for Southeast Asia and North Asia. Having a range of...
| Uber
Uber’s France-based in-house legal team has been dealing with two major regulatory overhauls of the mobility sector which cut the available pool of drivers by almost half in a less...
| Uber
US private hire company Uber has expanded exponentially since entering India in 2013 and now has 450,000 drivers. Identified as a “top country” with its rapidly expanding population and often...
Head of legal | Edeka
Leading the provision of legal advice at Germany’s largest supermarket corporation Edeka, Dr Hubertus Nölting is one of the most outstanding in-house lawyers in the region by virtue of his...
Vice president and group general counsel | Daimler
Accruing a revenue figure of over €153bn in 2016, Daimler is one of the world’s largest and most recognised automobile corporations. Particularly known for its luxury Mercedes-Benz brand, the company...
Head of legal and IP services | Remgro
Previously a highly decorated in-house legal officer for British American Tobacco, Luche Joubert has been head of legal and IP services for investment holding company Remgro since 2016. His time...
One day it is a ride-hailing service, the next a food delivery company. Soon it could be dealing with flying cars. When you work for the inhouse legal team at Uber, anything can come through the door. This is why the company’s associate GC for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Matthew Wilson, cites the attitude and ability of every one of his 40-lawyer team, covering 45 countries in the region, to roll their sleeves up as the legal function’s key asset. ‘While Uber has revolutionised the way people move in cities around the world, it’s equally true that we made mistakes along the way. The work our team does is helping to continue to change the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of the cities in which we operate,’ he summates. Uber has grown to revenues in excess of $7bn but has come in for a bumpy ride in various regions as the service does not always fit with existing laws and regulations. The most high-profile example of this came when Transport for London said it would not renew Uber’s private-hire operator licence in September last year, citing public safety and security implications. Uber is appealing the decision, in a case set for June, while another battle over the employment classification of Uber drivers is headed for the Court of Appeal in October. Wilson points to both cases as highlight work, led by UK legal director Helen Hayes and supported by the entire team, including employment counsel Jonathan Ollivent. He also lauds litigation wins in South Africa and France over the classification of drivers. In France, a change to licence types also affected tens of thousands of drivers, but Wilson says the company managed that transition in a successful and effective way: Western and Southern Europe legal director Riccardo Falconi and employment legal director Jean-Baptiste Chavialle are noted for their work on the French issues, and Robert Kayihura, Middle East and Africa legal director, for the South Africa win. Other standout matters the team has been involved in include the launch of its food-delivery arm, Uber Eats, in the summer of 2016, and working with teams in San Francisco to close the merger with the ride-hailing business of Russia’s largest technology company, Yandex, effectively creating a $3bn joint venture. Wilson comments: ‘Everyone in the team is handling something that’s either material or potentially existential to a country or a region, which is really unique among legal teams. Some of the material issues that we handle maybe happen once or twice a year in other teams I’ve been in, but here it’s across the team every single day. That’s challenging, but it’s also hugely exciting and very energising.’ The team has introduced technological initiatives, such as self-service contracts that the business teams can generate contracts from, as well as the use of Google Docs, allowing for faster-paced document creation and review, which most of Uber’s external counsel now use as well. Otherwise, Uber is headed for a likely initial public offering. ‘If and when it happens, that’s going to be a lot of work for everyone around the globe, especially the legal team.’ Wilson and his team draw plaudits for having an in-depth understanding of the broader business and looking at problems in different ways. Hogan Lovells partner Charles Brasted comments: ‘The most notable feature of their work is that there is no such thing as business as usual. They have to be on top of their game all the time. The Uber business obviously has had a challenging time, but this shows the value of a legal team that is trusted by the business and guides it through difficult times.’
