This week Martin Glenn, chief executive of United Biscuits, issued a rallying cry to general counsel. He called on them to build muscular, “solutions oriented” legal teams that understood their companies and had the ability to spot risks and opportunities – especially the kind that may not be on the radar of staff at the corporate coal face.
Speaking at the eleventh Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum, Glenn recognised that UK GCs had already come a long way from the old stereotype of the “chummy non-executive”. At the same time, the fallout from the credit crunch has undoubtedly helped push GCs in the UK and Europe closer to the centre of their companies given the avalanche of regulations that followed the banking crisis and renewed rigour about risk.
