High-profile BP general counsel Rupert Bondy has accepted a new role as senior vice president, general counsel and company secretary at UK-headquartered health, hygiene and home consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser. Mr Bondy joined BP as group GC and a member of its executive team in 2008 and has steered the company through a variety complex legal and risk-related matters, including the highly-publicised Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Prior to joining BP, Mr Bondy has served as senior vice president and general counsel of GlaxoSmithKline since 2001, as well as in a variety of private practice roles earlier in his career. He will leave BP at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, mental health charity St Andrews Healthcare has picked up in-house heavyweight Claire Carless as its new general counsel. Ms Carless joins the charity from Seimens UK, where she has served as general counsel for the last four years. Originally trained at Stephenson Harwood, Ms Carless enjoyed an 11-year in-house career at Vodafone before moving to Seimens. She has already been replaced by incoming Seimens UK general counsel Simone Davina, who has relocated from The Hague to take on the role.

Used vehicle aggregator BCA Marketplace has recruited its new general counsel Martin Letza from the Birmingham office of relationship firm Shoosmiths. Mr Letza was serving as head of corporate finance at the firm before making the switch in-house. Obtaining his LLB from the University of Manchester, Mr Letza worked in private practice at both Eversheds and Hammonds before moving to Shoosmiths in 2009.

The Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) has announced the appointment of Jeffrey Francer as its new senior vice president and general counsel. Mr Francer joins the GPhA from the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), where he has been overseeing the organisations regulatory law advocacy as vice president and senior counsel. He has also previously served as associate chief counsel at the US Food and Drug Administration, and as associate general counsel and US compliance officer at Biogen where he led the company’s corporate compliance efforts. Mr Francer will join the GPhA on 14 November.

Finally, Austrian Airlines re-hired former in-house leader Tamara Christ as the airline’s new secretary general and chief legal officer. Ms Christ is returning to Austrian after a three-year stint at rival carrier Lufthansa, where she most recently served as head of human Resources and legal affairs in Vienna. As CLO at Austrian she is replacing Stefan Mara, who himself left the airline to take up a group-level leadership role in data protection at Lufthansa. Ms Christ commences ay Austrian on 1 December.