Interim Group Chief Legal Officer — Renewal (Real Estate)

Every claim, three possible answers

Every legacy claim poses the same question in different clothes. Settling buys certainty at a price and may set a precedent for the next claimant. Defending protects a principle but consumes management attention and invites scrutiny. Exiting, by restructuring the relationship or the asset that generates the claim, can be the cleanest answer and the hardest to sell internally. This interim seat comes with executive authority to make these calls, and to make them consistently, under a policy agreed with the Audit Committee Chair rather than case by case.

Other judgement calls sit alongside. You will agree which legal matters are decided at group level and which thresholds local leaders retain. You will determine which inherited commitments carry on, pause or close. Legal proposals that shift exposure to another team without a clear owner will be refused, and so will investment cases that skip over uptake, lean on operations without saying how, or leave the downside unpriced. You will shape the legal leadership and the route by which issues rise, broker disputes between the Audit Committee and operating leaders, and give the board a fixed rhythm for seeing claims progress, legal exceptions and unresolved calls. In a listed property group these are also disclosure calls: what you settle and what you contest shapes what the market eventually reads.

What the committee should see across twelve months

At the close of the first ninety days, agreement should exist at committee level on a group-level allocation of legal decisions and a written policy for settling, defending or exiting claims. Around month nine, every open claim should have been assessed against that policy, and the proposals the function refused should be on record alongside whoever owns them. By month 12 the legal leadership structure and the board reporting cadence should be settled firmly enough that the function keeps its rhythm once the interim term ends.

A record of stopping things

Your knowledge of property and real estate comes from calls that carried your name, among them a commitment with no proper backing that you halted before it could do damage. The organisations behind that record had revenue of $980 million or more and 3,000 or more people, working in at least six countries. Before approving the continuation of an exception, you identified who bore its economic cost. Turnaround, joint venture and professionalisation experience are all examined; joint ventures especially, because claims involving partners rarely resolve on the law alone. Governance ethics should be at level 4; transaction law, disputes and investigations, and working with a board and its stakeholders should each be at level 3. Once the board has ruled you still own the follow-through, down to the tedious business of closing each legal exception, and you can take an open question to the Audit Committee Chair with a recommendation attached rather than a request for more time. You do not hold a stop decision hostage to a full consensus among country heads.

From the audit chair to the board table

Your first contact, in week one, is a confidential conversation by video with the Audit Committee Chair. The Board Chair takes the third week and will want to talk through how you would treat a contested claim. Week five means time in person with senior leaders drawn from every function; the seventh week, a closing meeting with the full board. After every stage, our written response reaches you inside two working days.