Speculation about the next move of O2 general counsel Philip Bramwell ended last month when he landed one of the highest profile legal jobs in the FTSE 100 — group head of legal at BAE Systems. Bramwell will succeed the defence giant’s veteran legal head, Michael Lester, who retires at the end of the year after nearly eight years in the post.
Bramwell, who was approached for the post over the summer, told Legal Week that he had been looking for a new role since the completion of O2’s £17.6bn takeover by Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica earlier this year.
"When you do a transaction like that, the first priority is to ensure there is an orderly handover and you restructure the department according to the new situations," he says.
O2 has looked internally to find Bramwell’s successor, with in-house competition lawyer Justine Campbell — who Bramwell recruited from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer — appointed as the new legal chief.
Of the move from telecoms to the defence sector, Bramwell says: "The change of sector will provide a lot of interest for me. One of the advantages in-house lawyers have is that they are able to move between sectors, provided there is a reasonable continuity of work they are facing."
Bramwell will also have to brush up on his US contacts as BAE has been focusing its strategy across the Atlantic in recent years. In July, it won a five-year contract worth $1.4bn (£756m) to supply equipment to the US Army while it recently agreed to sell its 20% stake in Airbus to EADS.
When it comes to external advisers, Bramwell insists he will carry no baggage with him when he arrives in November. "I carry no preconceived notions about that at all," he says. "They will have their own established relationships."
Under Lester, BAE has not operated a formal panel although the company has forged strong links with Slaughter and May, Allen & Overy and Linklaters.
At O2, Bramwell regularly instructed Freshfields, Olswang and SJ Berwin. Given Freshfields’ links to Bramwell — and its role advising on the 1999 merger between British Aerospace and Marconi Systems that forged BAE Systems — the firm will be hopeful of expanding its role with the business.
Originally qualified as a barrister, Bramwell’s career has seen him occupy senior legal and non-legal roles in the telecoms industry.
Before joining BT in 1998, Bramwell was a partner with specialist telecoms consultants DDV, underlining his commercial credentials. Prior to this, he was general counsel for the European arm of US telecoms giant BellSouth.
One senior O2 adviser says of Bramwell: "Philip is the model of the modern general counsel. He has enormous amounts of energy and is capable of stepping up to the challenge."
Lester, who became BAE’s legal director following its merger with Marconi in 1999, says he has plans beyond BAE but will not be drawn on specifics.
Reflecting on his time at BAE, he says: "I have had a very enjoyable seven years at BAE. It has had its ups and downs but we are on the up at the moment. It is pleasing to leave when the company is in such good shape."
Lester says the head of legal role — which at BAE is a board-level position — is an important one. "Companies realise that, however good their outside advisers are, they need to have somebody to turn to internally," he says.