UK supermarket giant Tesco has hired Jeff Langlands as general counsel of its UK and Republic of Ireland business, working alongside group GC Kay Majid.
Langlands joins from BT Group, where most recently he was GC for its corporate, digital and networks division.
He announced his arrival on LinkedIn, writing: “Delighted to have started at Tesco this week, as general counsel of the UK and ROI. Tesco is an exceptional business with a strong culture – and I’m excited to be working with Kay Majid and the legal team and all of our colleagues across the company.”
Langlands spent 19 years at BT across a number of legal roles, originally joining in 2006 as senior counsel for M&A. He later became chief counsel for BT Ireland, GC for BT business and GC for BT global and a director of its mobile business EE.
Prior to joining BT, Langlands was an associate in DLA Piper’s corporate department.
He added: “It has been a fond farewell to BT after many years and many fantastic roles. Huge thanks to everyone there, past and present, who have helped me along the way – I look forward to watching Allison Kirkby, Sabine Chalmers and the rest of the team there continuing to take a brilliant company forward.”
Tesco promoted Majid to the group GC role in September last year after former group GC Adrian Morris left to join consumer healthcare giant Haleon. Morris had been at Tesco for 12 years, having previously been associate GC at BP.
Majid has been with Tesco for more than 17 years. She originally joined in 2008 as senior counsel for litigation and IP, progressing to UK and group commercial legal director in 2012 and then a number of other roles until she was appointed interim group GC in July last year following Morris’s departure.
In other grocery-related moves, in July US supermarket giant Kroger hired George Vincent as GC from Dinsmore & Shohl, where he had previously been managing partner. That followed US-based online Asian supermarket Weee! earlier in July appointing Devang Shah as GC from Pivot Bio, filling a seat that had been empty since 2022.
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