Key team members : Amanda Gerrity (general counsel), Helen Campbell (senior legal counsel, Max Latchmore (legal counsel), Flora Baillie (legal counsel), Peggy Morrison (legal counsel) Daniela Borrageiro (paralegal). 

Team size:  six members in the UK - who support a retail energy business serving 7.7m households in the UK, Kraken Technologies (a tech business developing SaaS solutions for utilities customers globally), Octopus Energy Services (an energy services business), Octopus Electric Vehicles (an EV leasing business) and Octopus Electroverse (an EV charging app business). We have an affiliate fund business with two further lawyers in the UK, and a lawyer in each of our French, Italian, German, American and Spanish subsidiaries which have a dotted line into the UK team, but these individuals focus on their specific country or area and report into the business unit, with a total of 14 lawyers across the Group. This profile, however, focuses on the core UK team.  

What are your most significant cases or transactions over the last year?  

The Octopus Energy Group was established in only 2015 and has grown from scratch to a current valuation of $9bn, securing approximately $2.8 bn in investments since 2020. 

Some of our key achievements over the last year are securing investment, licensing agreements, acquisition of Shell Retail and more and a battery leasing deal among others. In December 2023, Octopus secured $800m in new funding from existing investors, reflecting a 60% increase in valuation since the previous investment round in December 2021. The team then supported a further secondary investment round in May 2024, bringing an additional two new investors into the Octopus Energy shareholder base. 

We have entered into numerous additional licensing agreements to expand the global and industry footprint of Kraken, Octopus Energy Group’s proprietary technology platform. This expansion included significant partnerships with utilities in the USA and Canada, a deal with Tokyo Gas in Japan, and ventures into additional verticals outside of energy, such as a major agreement with a UK water company. We also closed three acquisitions in the past year to bolster Kraken’s business.  

Also in December 2023, Octopus completed its acquisition of the Shell Energy retail customer book, adding 1.3 million customers in the UK and 300,000 in Germany. This acquisition made Octopus Energy the largest electricity supplier in the UK, a significant achievement since entering the UK market in 2015 – taking it past British Gas (Centrica), originally formed in 1812. The customers were migrated onto the Octopus-owned Kraken platform by March 2024, making it the quickest migration of its size in energy industry history. As part of the acquisition, Octopus sold the broadband business acquired from Shell to TalkTalk. 

In June 2024, Octopus signed the largest battery leasing deal globally with Gresham House, enabling Octopus to store more than 900 MWh of renewable energy—enough to power 1 million homes for an hour. Kraken will manage the charging and discharging of these batteries to optimise the use of renewable energy.  

Can you sum up the ethos or culture of your organisation in one sentence, with an explanation? 

Octopus has a culture of trust in its employees, providing the flexibility and scope to deliver on sizable deals with significant impact. This trust fosters an innovative and collaborative culture driven by the company’s commitment to sustainable energy solutions. 

Octopus focuses on having a small but highly talented team, with each member leading one of the major projects mentioned above. We operate transparently and openly, with a flat hierarchy that ensures all team members have direct access to the business directors, including the CFO and CEO. New work is managed through a centralised mailbox accessible to the entire team, promoting a collaborative environment where everyone is aware of ongoing business activities and can therefore see the areas of focus for deployment of the business. 

This approach supports a ‘muck-in’ mentality, allowing the team to work together and support each other to achieve company goals. By keeping the team intentionally small, we ensure members have a deep understanding of the business and can deliver maximum value. While this size brings the risk of burnout due to high work volumes, we mitigate this by quickly bringing in secondee support when needed. Our close relationship with a very small panel of law firms, which operate as an extension of our team, facilitates this support. 

The legal industry has typically relied on detailed, specialised expertise as being the model for success. This is at odds with almost every other industry, where agile and innovative business models prize adaptability and dynamism over specialisation. Octopus’s legal team has followed the ethos of its wider business in bucking industry trends with a trusted team to deliver results.  

How do you collaborate with other departments? 

The legal team at Octopus doesn’t merely align with the company strategy—we are fully embedded in and help create it. For major transactions, such as the licensing of Kraken, the legal team is deeply involved in structuring and negotiating the deals. With direct access to the business directors, the legal team is integral to commercial decisions. The general counsel’s participation in directors’ meetings ensures the legal team is informed about the company’s strategic direction and can align legal support accordingly. This close integration offers the legal team a unique opportunity to be closely involved in commercial decisions.