Interim Group Chief Legal Officer — Recovery

Who may sign, and for how much

Contractual authority is one of those disciplines that matters most just before it is noticed. While a business is small, the people who sign contracts are the people who run it, and the question of authority answers itself. As it grows, signatures spread: to product teams, distribution teams, operations and local entities, each with reasonable needs and each with its own view of what it may commit to. Somewhere in that spread, exposure is created that cannot be undone, because a contract signed is a contract owed. The Interim Group Chief Legal Officer is appointed to settle the question before that happens, and holds executive authority to do it.

That authority covers more than the signing matrix. You will set the rules for contractual authority, including how large a commitment local managers may sign alone, and choose the measures that steer spending, people and control. Each legal and contractual commitment will get your verdict to keep, hold or end it, and no proposal proceeds while its cost or risk has nobody answerable for it. Investment cases that cannot say who will work with the change, what it rests on and what failure would cost will be declined. You will approve the legal leadership structure and how problems are raised, and settle conflicts with operating leaders ahead of any commitment.

The judgement the seat asks for is mostly about proportion. A matrix that is too tight sends every routine agreement to the centre and teaches the business to work around legal; one that is too loose protects nobody. The skill is to set thresholds that match the real risk of each kind of commitment in an investment business, from distribution agreements and service contracts to arrangements that touch client assets, and to make early decisions reversible while the evidence is still incomplete. Because the organisation is state-linked, the framework must also be one that can be explained to stakeholders well beyond the legal function.

Two years from matrix to habit

During the first ninety days, a contractual authority matrix should be agreed with the Audit Committee Chair, setting the signing thresholds local leaders keep. Around month nine, inherited contractual commitments should have been reviewed against that matrix, and those without an accountable owner paused or renegotiated. By month 24, contractual authority should be applied consistently as the business grows, with legal successors in place and exceptions reported to the board.

The lawyer for the seat, and the selection

You have worked across five or more countries and can tell necessary local judgement from variation preserved only by history. Your record includes organisations of at least 800 people and revenue of $530 million or more, and you bring on legal successors as the framework changes, so that what is built over 24 months holds after you leave. Selection will examine your record in integration, succession and scale-up. Governance ethics is needed at level 4; at level 3, the selection looks for transaction legal skill, board and stakeholder management, and disputes and investigations. If ending a legal commitment would, for you, wait on the consent of every national head, or you want the post's influence but not two years of answering for it, the role is wrong for you.

It is the Audit Committee Chair you meet first, over a private video link in the opening week. The Risk Committee Chair takes week three, with a working exercise on contractual exposure; in week five executives responsible for each function meet you face to face; and in the seventh week you meet the full board. You will hear back on each stage within four working days.