Vodafone Group has announced that its long-time lawyer, Rosemary Martin, one of the UK`s leading in-house lawyers, will retire next year. Vodafone Group has replaced its long-time general counsel with an employee of a FTSE 250 company. “Rebecca Mills has been promoted to Group General Counsel and will report to CEO Johan Lundgren. Rebecca has been with easyJet for almost 12 years and brings extensive experience to the role, most recently as Deputy General Counsel and General Counsel for easyJet holidays. Undersecretary Ben Matthews will be promoted to general secretary and both will ensure a smooth transition and strong leadership at easyJet. Mike Cammarota, Senior Director of Legal Services, Global Transactions, at Accenture Consulting Firm, leads the legal department responsible for diversity and inclusion activities in North America. He talks to GC about his personal approach to diversity and inclusion and how it contributes to a broader company-wide mandate. In the 2018 edition, regularly included in the GC Powerlist, Matthew Wilson, then Uber EMEA GC, commented: “The way [Bie`s] took over a very traditional institution, transformed the legal function, and played an important role in transforming the business in the face of much more agile and unencumbered competitors was extremely impressive.” Other legal directors and their teams in the U.S. have shown a keen interest in how this is happening for us, especially as they see that it works and the world hasn`t stopped. At easyJet, she led a team of 75 people and received praise for her work guiding the airline through the significant challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, including a legal disagreement with the UK government over quarantine regulations and a cyberattack. Following GC`s recent launch of the “Bring your fully self to work” initiative, which aims to promote inclusion in the legal team globally, GC spoke with Rhanda Moussa and Jane Son, in-house lawyers who are co-chairs of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee for Law in the Americas, and Mark Chamberlain, Head of Diversity in the Americas at Barclays. Find out how this new initiative fits into the bank`s broader agenda of inclusion activities.
Also highly regarded by the legal community, de Bie spent five years becoming Group General Counsel at Royal Mail before joining easyJet in 2019. During her tenure with the firm, she nearly doubled her team membership and founded an in-house training academy to train young lawyers in soft skills such as networking and leadership, as well as traditional legal education. De Bie, Martin`s successor, has a similar reputation in the internal community. She received much praise in her role before easyJet, as Royal Mail`s GC. One of their initiatives was the creation of an in-house training academy that, in addition to traditional legal training, trained young lawyers in soft skills such as networking and leadership. Megan Doberneck, US CEO of Vodafone, talks about the company`s revolutionary maternity policy and why it makes sense to invest in working mothers. Rosemary Martin, the telecom giant`s longtime general counsel, will retire after more than 12 years in the role. The FTSE 100 giant has appointed EasyJet Group Chief Legal Officer and Group Chief Executive Maaike de Bie to replace them, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Prior to joining Vodafone, Martin was general counsel for Reuters for more than a decade and spent 14 years at the wealth firm Rowe & Maw, where she began her legal career in 1981 and later became a partner.
Rosemary Martin, Vodafone Group`s in-house authority and general counsel, will retire after more than a decade at the helm and will be replaced by easyJet`s respected GC, Maaike De Bie. An easyJet spokesperson said: “Group General Counsel and company secretary Maaike de Bie is leaving easyJet to join Vodafone early next year and we would like to thank her for her contribution to the airline over the past three and a half years.
