Healthcare is a hot topic right now, the subject of endless regulations and transactional activity. And as Genzyme’s UK and Ireland legal director, Antoinette Keane is at the heart of it all.
Genzyme itself went through transactional activity in 2011 as it was acquired by global healthcare company Sanofi. While Sanofi focuses on all sorts of different treatments, such as vaccinations, animal health products and oncology, Genzyme specialises in the treatment of rare diseases, putting tremendous pressure on a company that must ensure life-saving medicines are consistently available for its customers.
These pressures ultimately affect Keane’s three-person legal team in the UK and Ireland, a comparatively small group that is in charge of a mammoth task. As well as working with external contract manufacturers and distributors to ensure supply, the team also advises the company on the legal dos and don’ts as healthcare groups look to cut costs amid the Government’s budgetary restraints.
“Health economies around the world are under a lot of pressure to cut costs, and the UK and Ireland are not escaping that pressure despite the UK Government’s commitment to further funding for NHS England,” says Keane. “This in turn places pressure on healthcare companies, as health economies look to us for innovative solutions to the challenges.”
Investing in people
Keane’s team works with other departments in the business to come up with these solutions, ensuring they adhere to a variety of codes such as the voluntary Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry code of conduct.
While the legal division does not specifically handle IP matters, which are instead left to scientific specialists, the team focuses on contract management and data protection. As a result, Genzyme’s employees are trained on how to handle personal sensitive data.
“We invest time in training people and have put systems in place to enable the business to carry out some of the simpler work,” explains Keane.
“For example, we have a contract management policy and simple contract templates that enable the procurement team to negotiate some contracts without our help,” she says. “This allows the business to work at a faster pace and frees up our time to work on more complex issues.”
Considering the size of Keane’s legal team, this is undoubtedly a sensible idea. However, the company still prefers to keep work in-house, having no formal legal panel and keeping legal spend low. Keane explains that in-house teams “need to know and understand their business”, with her own group understanding this better “than external legal advisers ever could.”
She nonetheless has various external advisers, including Arnold & Porter partner Tim Frazer, who provides competition law and specific pharmaceutical advice, and Arthur Cox commercial partner Colin Kavanagh.
There is also Hogan Lovells, of which Keane is an alumna, for bespoke advice on the transparency code and cross-border disputes, as well as Blake Morgan, which acts on public procurement law and NHS matters.
The move to in-house
Blake Morgan was a firm used by Keane while she was NHS equipment provider Asteral’s first head of legal from 2007 to 2012. This was her first permanent move in-house and also first encounter with the health industry, having started out as a banking lawyer.
Following a move into project finance and commercial contracts during a secondment at Barclays Bank, she then came into contact with Asteral while working on a deal.
“Asteral wanted me to head up its legal team,” Keane remembers. “I hadn’t thought about going in-house and was very happy in private practice but I was attracted by its business model. The role enabled me to build a legal team from scratch, put corporate governance structures in place in the company and move into the healthcare industry.”
Looking for the next challenge
Before Keane’s arrival, Asteral had been organised so that individual business lines had instructed their own lawyers. However, the development of a central legal function led the company to save money, with Keane leading the management of contracts and again deciding against setting up a panel.
She says she “thoroughly enjoyed her time” at Asteral, but adds that she was also ready for the next challenge after five years.
“At Asteral we worked on mainly domestic and commonwealth issues, but joining Sanofi Genzyme presented a nice opportunity to work for a truly global organisation on pan-European issues as well as global issues,” she says, adding that she really enjoys working with her international colleagues.
With Genzyme being bought by Sanofi in 2011, Keane has been required to work with the company’s legal team across the world.
However, there’s no doubt that she has also got much closer to the business by being part of the former’s senior leadership team. This is a role that has enabled the legal director to analyse Genzyme’s financials and business plans, meaning that she can manage the legal resources with what is actually available.
As new procurement laws and EU data protection rules appear on the horizon, Keane is spending a lot of time at the moment keeping up to date with the changes and ensuring they are translated effectively to the rest of the business.
It’s all part of what makes healthcare such a challenging industry, but for Keane, “that’s part of the excitement of the job.”
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