By James Touzel
TLT has hired Stuart Murray, former director of regulatory affairs at BT Consumer, as a partner in its London office to launch a regulatory affairs consultancy service.
The service will enable digital businesses to anticipate, influence and prepare for regulatory changes and issues concerning public policy, government affairs, regulatory affairs, regulatory finance and regulatory economics, including compliance and disputes.
Given Stuart’s recent experience, the service will be aimed at telecoms, media and broadcasting companies, with a longer term focus on additional regulated industries including clean energy, retail and consumer goods and financial services.
The service, coupled with TLT’s legal expertise, creates a unique industry knowledge base for mid-tier companies – putting them on a more equal footing with their larger competitors, who typically provide this type of service in-house – and provides a model for larger companies to obtain efficiency savings. TLT will also build tools to address common themes and issues.
Stuart managed all aspects of BT’s regulation and compliance for its retail fixed line and calls, broadband, mobile, TV and sport businesses. He was previously Openreach’s chief counsel for competition and regulatory law, dealing with multi-million pound regulatory and competition issues for the most highly regulated communications infrastructure provider in the UK.
He has 14 years’ experience as a competition and regulatory lawyer and regulatory affairs and public policy professional in the digital sector. His experience includes regulatory and competition law investigations and disputes, sectorial and market reviews, Competition Appeal Tribunal litigation, administrative appeals and European Court references, policy development and lobbying.
James Touzel, partner and head of digital at TLT, says: “The role of law firms and lawyers is changing and we are working hard to proactively recognise the challenges they face and develop the right solutions to address those needs – using our existing resources or bringing in new skills and technologies. Stuart’s appointment and our new regulatory consultancy service is very much a part of that.”
Stuart Murray, partner at TLT, says: “This is a new service for companies in highly regulated sectors like telecoms. While some enterprises have access to high quality public policy and regulatory affairs consultancy in-house, others need to look externally for a breadth of affordable professional services in order to compete. By curating this pool of specialist and complementary expertise, we are giving clients an opportunity to better influence policy makers and regulators and anticipate and commercially react to new legislation.
“TLT has a very clear understanding of how the market is changing and how it can continue to offer the best services to its clients. I am excited to be leading this new proposition.”
The appointment follows the recruitment of Daniel Lloyd, former head of consumer law for BT Consumer, and TLT’s appointment by BT to its legal panel.
