Selected major experiences
A selection of matters led or delivered across nearly 20 years in-house at GfK, NielsenIQ, adidas and Sony, spanning transactions, legal operations, compliance and privacy.
Restructuring
- Restructured and rightsized a global legal team to optimise service delivery.
Commercial
- Drafted and negotiated major client and vendor contracts (MSAs, SOWs, BPO) across the UK, EU and US, including intake and workload management.
Legal operations & scalability
- Ran the RFP and onboarded a global preferred law firm panel, including rate negotiation and performance monitoring.
- Streamlined the group corporate entity database covering appointments, powers of attorney, Prokura and key corporate documents.
- Standardised global policies, sales and procurement templates and KPI reporting.
- Migrated contract management from client-led to technology-enabled using Salesforce CPQ and Conga CLM.
Technology & solution rollouts
- Implemented OneTrust for data privacy management and GDPR compliance.
- Identified and consolidated the global IP portfolio into a central database.
- Configured BWise (SAI360 GRC) for compliance management.
Outsourcing & shared services
- Transitioned IBM’s build-operate-transfer model in-house, establishing an offshore Global Service Centre. The Economic Times ↗
- Outsourced internal sales processes against defined service levels and KPIs.
- Led the legal workstream for business process outsourcing contracts: HRIS (Workday), payroll (NGA/Alight) and finance functions (Wipro). Workday rollout, LinkedIn ↗
Transactions & capital structure
- Led the legal workstream for the €342m sale of a consumer panel business unit to secure EU merger clearance for a larger transaction, including TSA/rTSA dependencies and separation governance. Yahoo Finance ↗
- Led the legal workstream (documentation, stakeholder alignment and negotiations) for the multi-€bn divestiture of GfK by KKR/NIM to Advent International and NielsenIQ. NielsenIQ ↗
- Led the legal workstream for a €650m Senior Secured Term Loan B and €150m revolving credit facility, including credit ratings. Yahoo Finance ↗
- Led the merger of a German operating entity into an international holding.
- Led the post-signing legal workstream for the €105m carve-out and sale of an ad hoc market research business unit. Yahoo Finance ↗
Litigation
- Led GfK’s response to multi-year litigation over Austria’s TELETEST audience-measurement service, where a software error in a new measurement-device rollout produced incorrect audience data. Directed external counsel and cross-functional technical and commercial teams through investigation, remediation, liability assessment, negotiation and litigation strategy. medianet.at ↗
Sustainability
- Authored the inaugural sustainability report, establishing an EcoVadis reporting cadence and silver rating. GfK Sustainability Report 2021 (PDF) ↗
Compliance & governance
- Developed a systematic screening programme for sanctions compliance.
- Led an IDW PS 980 certification project with an external auditor, achieving certification against the standard.
- Designed and implemented two global compliance management systems on a “Prevent, Detect, Respond” framework: training, communication, whistleblowing, investigations and consequence management.
- Authored an award-winning code of conduct. Compliance Manager ↗ Compliance Manager 2016 (PDF) ↗
Privacy & cybersecurity
- Conducted audits and gap analyses with external auditors, identifying improvements and remediation plans.
- Rolled out a GDPR compliance framework, coordinating cross-functional teams to raise privacy standards globally.
- Led the GfK/NIQ privacy integration, coordinating cross-functional teams and implementing intra-group data transfer agreements.