About

Team size: Over 300

What are the most important transactions, litigations or other major projects that you have been involved in during the last year?

At its height, the Covid pandemic produced unprecedented challenges for the world and for businesses. Our legal, regulatory and compliance communities delivered creative solutions to the challenges faced by the business. They demonstrated great agility and flexibility in support of their colleagues who maintain the supply of vital national defence and security capability to government customers.

Perhaps the most important projects from my perspective were the extraordinary ones, focused on supporting governments and communities in the countries where we operate as they responded to the pandemic. In the UK, for example, our employees responded to the national effort through their involvement in the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium and the development of an entirely new ventilator. We also utilised our 3D printers and worked with our supply chain to supply 150,000 face shields to help protect NHS staff on the front line.

What were the main difficulties your company faced during the initial Covid lockdown?

BAE Systems has many staff engaged in the delivery of critical defence and national security capabilities who had to continue working throughout the lockdown. Our principal focus during this period was protecting their health and wellbeing by adapting our workplaces so that employees who need to work at our sites or in our offices could do so safely.

Did the Brexit deal reached at the end of 2020 give you and your business greater clarity for the future?

BAE Systems has limited UK-EU trading and given the geographical spread of our operations and established positions on long-term contracts in the UK, US and Australia, the impacts across the business are limited.

Anything else to mention?

Over the past 18 months, I certainly came to appreciate more than ever just what a privilege it is to lead a community of highly skilled and motivated professionals across a global business. Faced with a global crisis, every member of the legal and compliance community demonstrated the ability to adapt rapidly to an altered state of working and to make countless judgments under pressure, many based on principle alone, which have proved with hindsight to have been absolutely the right ones to have made.