About

Team size: 24
Major law firms used: Baker Botts, Herbert Smith Freehills, Holman Fenwick Willan, Lewis Silkin

Nicholas Ansbro, the long-serving GC of Gazprom Marketing & Trading (GMT), has had a seasoned career both in private practice and in-house. He started as a corporate associate in the cut-and-thrust atmosphere of Clifford Chance in the 1980s. He got the taste for in-house life in 1994 while on a secondment at Reuters, but made a permanent switch in 2003, joining Corona Energy as head of legal.

Ansbro then joined GMT, a subsidiary of Russian gas giant Gazprom, as assistant GC in 2008. He had considerable shoes to fill when, in 2014, he took over from longstanding GC Jacqueline Hill, after she departed for Harkand.

Based in London, Ansbro is the head of legal for a company that employs over 900 people worldwide, with divisions in Houston, Singapore, Paris, Berlin, Zug and Manchester. The primary focus of the business is to implement Gazprom’s global natural gas business strategy, by bringing Russian reserves to the market.

Since becoming GC, Ansbro has involved himself in business-critical work. Major transactional highlights include a 2015 agreement to supply Centrica with gas on a six-year deal, as well as an agreement to acquire 1.2 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually from the Perenco project in Cameroon, which is being developed by Norwegian shipping company Golar LNG. But in 2018, Ansbro and the rest of the business has had to contend with the departure of Vitaly Vasiliev, the visionary chief executive who spent over a decade turning GMT into the company it now is.

Herbert Smith Freehills partner James Farrell comments: ‘Nick is great to work with. He’s always across the detail on any technical or regulatory issues and has a real sense of what the business needs from the legal function.’