About

Team size: 200
Major law firms used: Allen & Overy, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Pinsent Masons

The GC hot seat at Tesco is not to be taken lightly. The last few years have been particularly pressurised thanks to fierce litigation and monumental M&A deals. The man tasked with overseeing these thorny legal issues is Adrian Morris, a hugely experienced in-house lawyer who joined Tesco in 2012 after numerous roles at the likes of Centrica, BP and British Gas.

Top of the agenda was the fallout from Tesco’s £250m profit misstatement in 2014. Five years on, the retailer is still feeling the effects, with a £129m deferred prosecution agreement being struck with the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in 2017. A civil claim, brought by disputes specialist Stewarts Law on behalf of over 125 institutional funds who claim to have lost money, is still ongoing. A separate criminal trial, brought by the SFO against former Tesco executives was quashed in the last year. Morris notes the past few years have been characterised by prosecution. He adds: ‘A lot of people had to give evidence at that trial.’

Outside of litigation, there was the £3.7bn takeover of wholesaler Booker, completed in early 2018. Under substantial pressure from Booker’s rivals, such as SPAR and Bestway, the acquisition was subject to intense scrutiny from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The CMA eventually gave Tesco the green light in December 2017. ‘That was the single most important thing the legal team worked on in the last year.’

With such responsibility, Morris insists that Tesco can compete with any law firm when it comes to recruiting junior talent: ‘We have a good, stable team here, but when we need to go into the market we have absolutely no problem in hiring high-quality, energised lawyers. If you offer people the right career development, in-house is just as popular as it has ever been.’

And it is clear that Morris himself relishes that responsibility. ‘It is really important that the legal function has a big presence at the decision-making table. I want a legal function that is a genuine strategic adviser to the business.’