Features

Offering defense solutions on both sides of the pond

Defense contractors navigate a sea of regulations—it comes with the territory of handling sensitive material for nations and militaries. And the more a contractor grows, the more it must reconcile its increasingly complex business structure with the regulations that govern it.

In charge of that task for U.S.-based Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions (CAES) is Bruce Almquist, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. CAES is one sector of the U.K.-based Cobham Group that each year manufactures billions of dollars’ worth of high performance electronics for the aerospace, avionics, satellite, radio, wireless and mobile connectivity markets. The company’s microelectronic devices can be found in advanced naval cruisers, fighter jets and even the International Space Station.

Cobham Advanced Electronics Solutions

The legal and compliance team of four manages regulatory, compliance and organizational concerns for all of the Cobham Group within North America.

Bruce Almquist, has been with the company since 2010, and says one of CAES’ main concerns is abiding by the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) strict rules regarding foreign-ownership.

Strict regulations—and lots of them

Foreign ownership, control or influence (FOCI) rules are enforced by the Department of Defense to ensure that Cobham Group employees abroad and in the U.S. aren’t making decisions about CAES’ operations. Similarly, the regulation minimizes chances that classified information gets into the hands of other countries.

As a result, Almquist says CAES must set up special protections to make sure that Cobham’s U.S. and U.K. locations are communicating in ways that don’t accidentally violate the regulations. For example, the parent company can only participate in management of the U.S. subsidiary through its board.

“The CEO in the U.K. can’t call up someone in the U.S. and say ‘go do this,’” Almquist says. “There has to be a process that’s followed.”

Cobham Advanced Electronics Solutions

Similarly, as an international company with operations in the U.S. and U.K. and with intermediaries across the world, Almquist’s team must ensure the company is compliant with anti-bribery laws—with a focus on the U.K. Bribery Act and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Abiding by these regulations isn’t as simple as making sure no one takes a naked bribe—it means setting parameters for how contracts are written, as well as when, where and how meetings are conducted. When working with the Western world’s most powerful militaries, even a mild slip-up can have consequences for Cobham’s business.

On the same page

Recently, the legal and compliance team helped Cobham Group transition from a holding company, to a more fully integrated group, specifically in its legal, contracts and compliance functions.

The CEO in the U.K. can’t call up someone in the U.S. and say ‘go do this. There has to be a process that’s followed.”

“In a very simplistic sense, we had 20 or 30 separate businesses only held together by a common name,” he says. “They didn’t work with each other and in some cases competed with each other.”

Each of those businesses had their own leadership teams, so that the corporation as a whole had multiple executives and functions, such as human resources, finance and contracts.

“Before, there was no centralization,” Almquist says. “However, in a horizontal or centralized functional organization all people within the same function now report up to their head.”

HR personnel report to HR instead of HR reporting to an executive whose job it is to communicate with other executives in the corporate headquarters. The complicated structure also made it harder for functions to share new ideas and become more efficient.

Cobham Advanced Electronics Solutions

“You might have a contracts person in one business doing something one way and he or she has no knowledge of how someone else in a similar position is doing it in another business. They’re not learning from each other,” he says.

Centralizing functions has helped them become more efficient and share knowledge and resources. But no good change comes without a few challenges; in this case it was getting all of the previously decentralized functions to agree on a single protocol.

FOCI adds another layer of complexity as the corporation must communicate those protocols in a way that doesn’t violate the regulations.

Problem solvers

To manage all of these issues with only four staff members, Almquist says he needs people who are quick thinking and practical. “It’s nice to be smart,” he says, “…but I need someone who can handle our internal and external customers and crisis calls.”

Almquist finds these crises and logistics exciting and says he joined Cobham for the chance to become general counsel, a position he’d always wanted for its fast pace and variety of work.

Before Cobham, he learned how to lead legal teams during his 18 years at information technology company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS). During his last six years with the U.S.-based company, he was vice president and legal manager for the U.S. public sector, overseeing a team of over 25 lawyers and contract professionals.

He also spent three and a half years in England, overseeing EDS’ European Legal team that comprises over 100 lawyers and contract professionals in the U.K. and Europe.  The job not only gave him legal and leadership experience, but cultural experience as well.

Even before moving from a private firm to in-house—and even before entering law school—Almquist knew he wanted to work with businesses. He says the seed was planted during a high school business law class, which fascinated him.

“I loved solving problems and that’s what drew me to business law rather than litigation,” he says.

Published on: June 6, 2017

regions:

categories: , ,

Showcase your feature on your website with a custom “As Featured in Vanguard” badge that links directly to your article!

Copy and paste this script into your page coding (ideally right before the closing tag) where you want to display our review banner.

Testimonials

The piece highlighting my company, Bob Baker Enterprises, Inc., came out fabulous. Our company is in the new and used car sales and service industry. Everyone was great to work with and extremely professional. They produced a high-quality product and have provided expert assistance and guidance post-production of the article.
– Wade Poulson, General Counsel, Bob Baker Enterprises Inc.
It was a great honor to be featured in Vanguard Law. Working with every member of the team, from the initial interview with Erin Clark, through production with Victor Martins, writing the article with Taryn Plumb and creating the final content with Dave Gushee, was a true pleasure. Everyone was very professional, enthusiastic and supportive, and their creative approach and positive attitude clearly came through in the final product.
– Kevin C. Rakowski, Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, Compliance with Radian Group Inc.
As promised in advance, my feature in Vanguard has increased my visibility within the profession and prompted more than a few people I have not communicated with recently to reconnect. One of the Italian law firms I have used in the past is now in the process of interviewing me for an article on their website and tweeting out the feature story. Activity and the number of people connecting with me on LinkedIn has soared, which is great. The Vanguard writers and editorial staff were great to work with—highly professional and made the effort to make the experience both fun and rewarding (they were also respectful of the time pressures and demands all lawyers face). I was very pleased with the experience and the final outcome. Needless to say, I have been very pleased. All in all working with Vanguard has been a very positive experience which generated good publicity for both Shawcor and myself. My sincere thanks.
– Tim Hutzul, General Counsel, ShawCor Ltd.
I was honored to be the subject of an article. I enjoy reading Vanguard articles and seeing how other attorneys got to their positions and see their jobs. It's also interesting to see how different law firms partner with the subjects of the articles.
– Henry Marquard, in-house counsel, Stanley Consultants Inc.

LATEST EDITION

Summer IV 2023

READ NOW

GET VANGUARD IN YOUR INBOX.

  • * We’ll never share your email or info with anyone.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.