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Welcome to the BT issue. Well, ok, this week’s mag is not entirely devoted to the UK’s biggest telecoms giant, but it’s not far off. And to be fair, when it comes to BT, there’s quite a lot going on.
Often when we profile an in-house legal team the reason is either that the general counsel has recently overhauled its external panel, introduced some snazzy innovation, or has just completed a major deal. With BT, all of these developments are just a fraction of the story.
There aren’t many major businesses that have been through as much change in recent years as BT. Five years ago it faced dwindling revenues and had been forced into a wholesale reinvention of the business. Its response was to embrace radical new ways of working, including the launch of an ABS designed to turn BT’s legal team from a loss-making revenue stream into a profit centre.
At the core of all of this change is general counsel Dan Fitz. But as our cover feature reveals, this story is about much more than simply Fitz. Indeed, if we can be allowed to blow our own trumpet for a second, it also includes current Hot 100 member Rachel Canham, BT’s M&A chief counsel, who spent much of last year working on the legal, governance and compliance integration planning of EE into BT. And elsewhere you’ll find details of the contribution of the likes of BT commercial general counsel Chris Fowler, director of compliance and COO Gareth Tipton, and head of litigation Dave Hart.
Of course the most visible development in the BT story this year is the mammoth £12.5bn takeover of EE, a deal that finally received the green light from the Competition and Markets Authority on 29 January. The full implications of the merger for both in-house legal teams are still being worked through but even with this epic deal accounted for there is still more to the BT story.
Last month the telecoms company signed a landmark £31.6m deal with third-party litigation funder Burford Capital. As Tabby Kinder reports in the City column on page 12, this first-of-its-kind deal means parts of BT’s current and future litigation will be funded by Burford, taking the burden of risk off the telecoms business and giving the funder the chance to make a profit.
On so many levels BT and its legal team are blazing a trail.
