Wilson, who will join his new employers in August, is calling for a frenetic six-year stint at Uber, which has faced thorny legal and regulatory issues throughout his tenure. Wilson, who took office in June, had previously focused on Northern and Eastern Europe since July 2016. He joined Uber in July 2015 as General Counsel for the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia after working at Telefonica Digital, where he spent three years. 2004-08 Partner, Baker & McKenzie 2008-11 Legal Counsel, O2 UK 2011-12 Legal Advisor, Arsenal Football Club 2013-15 Head of Legal and Commercial Affairs, Telefónica Digital 2015-17 General Counsel, Uber 2017 Associate General Counsel for EMEA, Uber Wilson commented on his upcoming role: “This is an exciting time of development for the industry and a really exciting time to join a company. which I have admired for a long time. Fremantle is the heart of pop culture worldwide and continues to be at the forefront of innovation in entertainment. I look forward to joining the team and having the opportunity to contribute to Fremantle`s growth. Wilson`s appointment comes amid other changes to the taxi app`s in-house legal team. Helen Fletcher is now General Counsel for the UK and Ireland. Previously, she was Senior Legal Counsel in the firm`s London office. Waitzman joined West and Tammy Albarrán, deputy general counsel, at the top of Uber`s legal hierarchy. The firm also promoted Elizabeth Abbene Coleman, Assistant General Counsel for Litigation, Global Competition and Intellectual Property, to Assistant General Counsel this month. Coleman, a former Chicago-based partner at Jenner & Block, joined Uber in 2019.
When Wilson joined the team, there were only 15 lawyers in EMEA. Since then, the team has 50 employees in 43 countries, with qualified lawyers in 15 jurisdictions. Wilson moved from London to Amsterdam last year when he took over the EMEA position vacated by Callaghan. Wilson doesn`t think he`ll be able to continue to grow his workforce even as the company grows, whether through new product lines like Uber Eats or JUMP e-bikes. An IPO would also have valued the company at more than $100 billion. But Wilson talks about adding the right people — one new hire had a background in programming, while another joined Stockholm when the company set up shop there. The team has ten vacancies and when a job in the UK was recently posted online, more than 150 applied within a week. Wilson summed up his time at Uber as follows: “I`m so grateful to everyone at Uber for a fantastic six years. It has been a real privilege to build and lead our legal teams in EMEA and APAC, working with everyone in the company to grow Uber from a start-up to the publicly traded organization it is today. After spending the last four years in Amsterdam, it`s the right time for our family to return to the UK and I`m looking forward to embarking on a new adventure in Fremantle. “We are determined to be patient and do the right things that we believe will pay off in the long run. Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi and General Counsel Tony West have made huge improvements, but there is still a lot of work to be done to earn and maintain the trust of regulators and the public, especially in Europe.
We see new opportunities for partnerships with European cities. This means that we must work with, not against others. It`s not something Uber has always been good at in the past. The road has undeniably been bumpy for Uber in recent years. The company previously pursued aggressive growth at all costs, and Wilson says that led to many of the challenges his team still faces today. In the US, Legal Week also reported this week (13 September) that Salle Yoo, general counsel and chief executive officer of Uber Technologies, will be leaving the company. A colleague from GC Technology said of Wilson in the 2018 GC Powerlist: “Matt Wilson at Uber is someone who has to deal with very sensitive and ongoing legal issues. You`d go a long way to find someone who has a harder job.
He is widely credited with successfully managing the rapid growth of Uber`s internal team, which grew from zero to 75 employees in just five years between 2015 and 2020. West, brother-in-law of Vice President Kamala Harris, joined Uber in 2017 after working at the Justice Department during the Obama administration. He is General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Uber and has been instrumental in recent years in helping the San Francisco-based company overcome various legal and regulatory hurdles that challenge its business model. Matthew Wilson, Uber`s General Counsel in the UK, has been appointed Deputy General Counsel for EMEA, among a number of other changes to the in-house legal team. The decision comes after a group of Uber drivers argued in an employment court in 2016 that they were entitled to similar legal protection afforded to workers under UK law. The findings were subsequently upheld by the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal. The team put more work in-house and reduced the share of external legal expenses from about 75% of the budget to 58%. He predicts that external legal services will ultimately account for only a third of the budget, especially as litigation subsides, adding that the firm has reversed its previous approach of starting first and adapting to regulation later. O2 was previously an Arsenal sponsor and Wilson knew the club`s GC, Svenja Geissmar. He stayed there for 18 months before being lured back to Telefónica for a new venture capital arm.
The job was to build and lead an international team, an experience that Wilson said would prove crucial to eventually end up at Uber. “It was too good to refuse. My ten-year-old self has never forgiven me and probably never will. Robert Kayihura has also been appointed General Counsel for the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan. Previously, he was General Counsel for Sub-Saharan Africa. The role introduced Wilson to Silicon Valley. O2 acquired an internet phone company called Jajah and Wilson says his eyes were open to what he wanted to do in the future. But he then took a job at Arsenal Football Club, a team he has supported since the age of six (the grief of dropping a bag of bottles of jelly-cola into the urinal during a Tottenham match to which his father took him meant that Arsenal`s rivals north of London were excluded).