Colt general counsel Robin Saphra has left the telecoms company and has been replaced by company secretary Caroline Griffin Pain.
Saphra became Colt’s group general counsel in 2005, in which time he has seen the company’s in-house legal team grow by 328 per cent. Headcount in 2012 stood at 35, with the legal workforce growing to 60 last year.
Prior to joining Colt, Saphra was Dubai Holdings’ chief legal and regulatory officer and has also held in-house roles at BTG and T-Mobile.
Saphra left Colt a few weeks ago, with company secretary Caroline Griffin Pain taking up the reins of its legal team. She has also been with the company for over ten years and was previously company secretary at Thomson Reuters.
Last year, Colt extended Baker & McKenzie’s role as its preferred legal adviser for an additional year, ahead of a planned review of how the legal team appoints outside counsel. The firm originally won the mandate in 2012.
Other firms often used by Colt in Europe include Slaughter and May and DLA Piper.
Colt is itself going through a significant period of change, after fund manager Fidelity offered to take the telecoms services group private. Carl Grivner also took over as the company’s new CEO at the start of 2016 replacing Rakesh Bhasin.