What are the most significant cases or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?  

In December 2022, the team led negotiations of LSEG’s transformational $2.8bn ten-year strategic partnership with Microsoft for next-generation data and analytics and cloud infrastructure solutions. Microsoft also acquired a multi-billion-dollar stake in LSEG, and Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s EVP for AI/Cloud, joined the LSEG board. The partnership transforms the way customers discover, analyse and trade securities around the world, advancing LSEG’s cloud strategy, and building improved resilience and agility, with LSEG Workspace interoperability with Microsoft Teams and Excel. An innovative transaction involving circa 40 mostly bespoke contracts, requiring a multi-disciplinary, highly collaborative team approach, with significant internal and external stakeholder engagement, including LSEG’s key regulators.   

Additionally, we acquired Quantile, a capital optimisation and compression services provider; Maystreet, a low-latency technology and market data provider; GDC, a global identity verification data provider; Tora, a cloud-based technology provider supporting multi-asset class trading globally; and Acadiasoft, automated uncleared margin processing and risk optimisation services provider. 

Can you foresee any key developments to the way general counsel work over the next five years?  

Generative AI will be transformational – functionality like Microsoft’s Copilot is game-changing for employee productivity and efficiency gains. Further, general counsel have a role in leading the conversation around data ethics and human-centred decision-making with AI. LSEG’s L&C team is well-placed for this. As a culture carrier for the Group’s values and behaviours, it maintains excellent relationships with LSEG’s global regulators, holding the Group to the highest DE&I standards.  

Cost control remains vital. We derive maximum value from our panel firms and ensure we utilise our global footprint, positioning our teams in cost-efficient locations. Our MLS continues to generate savings by outsourcing low and medium-risk contracting, leaving complex contracts managed by a leaner in-house team. MLS facilitates increased turnaround times and identifies barriers to execution, reducing time to contract, freeing up sales time and driving revenue growth.   

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense? 

 As a global team supporting growing and dynamic businesses, we wanted to improve our insight into emerging themes and common challenges, to identify risks and efficiency opportunities. Using Microsoft’s Power Platform, we developed our in-house management solution to automate routine activities and generate MI through self-service legal solutions for our business divisions through our business-facing ‘front door’, a fully integrated e-billing application and end-to-end sanctions monitoring solution. Built at minimal cost with no impact on operating expenses, we eradicated run costs using existing Microsoft licences.   

As the legal landscape evolves, what steps are you taking to foster a culture of continuous learning and development within the legal team, ensuring that they are all well-equipped to address future legal complexities? 

We partner with panel firms on a range of issues, including training on emerging legislation (eg ESG, AI, data regulations).  We couple this with in-house horizon scanning to ensure relevant focus. Our leadership team regularly meet with external providers to gain insight into emerging trends.   

The team is matrix-aligned to the Group’s business divisions, enabling it to operate at the centre of strategic decision-making.  Continual focus on internal mobility – secondments to business divisions, lateral moves within the function, promote learning/growth.  

This approach enables us to develop talent and prepare for change.