No headline, really, about Samsung Electronics, appointing its first-ever European general counsel. If, however, you read the announcement in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, Feb. 2009 at 52, you might raise an eyebrow. Since February 2008, a secondee from Eversheds coordinated the company’s 14-lawyer in-house team in Europe. That lifts the eyebrows a bit, but they leap when you learn that John Benjamin was an associate.
Most of the instances on this blog of secondments are for filling relatively junior roles. To serve most of a year as the European general counsel for a huge Korean conglomerate certainly wins the prize for most responsibility by a secondee (See my post of Jan. 23, 2008: secondees with 8 references.).