John Davidson General Counsel and Group Secretary SABMiller plc
John Davidson joined SABMiller in 2006 as General Counsel and Group Company Secretary, and member of the Group Executive Committee. Before joining the group, he had spent his entire legal career at Lovells where he had been a partner since 1991, working mainly on international corporate finance, cross-border mergers and acquisitions and securities transactions, and general corporate advisory work, and spent five years in Lovells’ New York office from 1990 to 1995. He worked on numerous projects for SABMiller following Lovells' appointment as the group's principal UK legal advisor in 1998, including SABMiller's London listing in 1999, a number of major acquisitions in both developed and emerging markets, and various bond and equity financings – and in that capacity has worked with a number of Lex Mundi member firms.
SABMiller is listed on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges, and is one of the world's largest brewers, with brewing interests and distribution agreements in over 60 countries across six continents. The group is also one of the largest bottlers of Coca-Cola products in the world.
John has for the past two years been a member of the executive committee and a joint deputy chairman of the GC 100 group (the association of general counsel and company secretaries of the FTSE 100) and has been elected as Chairman of the GC 100 for 2010.
