HOT 100 Spotlight Series - Gavin Bergin

Gavin Bergin, Head of Secretariat for British Land has the honour of drawing first blood in the 2022 Governance HOT 100 Spotlight Series. The Spotlight Series focuses on a winner from each HOT 100 category a week, over 10 weeks. Gavin was nominated and won in the Team Leader category and had this to say to DMJ Co-founder and Managing Director, David Press...

How did you become a company secretary/governance professional?

I did a Law degree at the University of Portsmouth with the intention of becoming a criminal or military barrister (A Few Good Men is one of my favourite films..). The reality of what that job actually looked like didn’t really align with what attracted me to it in the first place and by the time I was nearing the end of my third year, Portsmouth was raising the profile of its joint ICSA/LLM Masters. I liked the commercial aspect of what I had heard about the role and the variety that it offered so signed up to do the post-graduate course.

The Director of Post-Graduate studies (who also happened to be my dissertation tutor) invited me to a careers event which was hosted by a specialist Company Secretarial recruitment firm. It was a great event. I got talking to two of the recruiters and realised that I could train on the job and go straight into work rather than doing the Masters – the idea of earning money rather than incurring more student debt was very appealing to me! My dissertation tutor was horrified, but I cancelled my application for the Masters and went looking for a trainee job. After a couple of interviews, I accepted a position as a Trainee Company Secretarial Assistant at Capital Shopping Centres Group plc (which later became intu) where I stayed for the next four years and gained a really good foundation of knowledge of experience.

After a brief stint in the banking industry and a similarly brief stint in insurance, 10 years later I am back in real estate and am now Head of Secretariat at British Land.

What has been your biggest achievement to date?

Without question, getting through the last two years.

As I’m sure it does for everyone, March 2020 now feels like a complete blur. Pandemics are obviously horrible things to go through and the impact on people, business, mental health, physical health and a lot more besides, is something I think the country underestimated. For me personally, we flipped into crisis mode very quickly and the company mobilised the workforce to work remotely where possible and to work safely where they were required to work at a site. This seemed to all happen in a matter of minutes. As the reality of the pandemic sank in and we realised we were in it for the long haul, wellbeing and understanding was number one on our list of priorities. At the same time, we saw a change of leadership as a business, a refreshed corporate strategy, several large transactions, and personnel changes within the team.

Supporting my team and coming out of the other side with a closer, more able, and more in-tune group of people who have built up a level of resilience (that I’m sure most of them won’t recognise until years later) is something I’m very proud of. At the same time, we’ve delivered a high standard of service to the business, at a fast rate of change and under increasing levels of pressure.

British Land and in particular the Legal and Co Sec function that I sit within, is a fantastic place to work, so this doesn’t really feel like an achievement but just a very good end product of how we do things.

What does winning in this category mean to you?

I was thrilled when I found out I had won. Even more so because I have since found out that members of my team came together to nominate me. I took on leading my team informally in March 2021, in an interim capacity in October and permanently from January this year. Management is hard, but coming up through the ranks of the team and going from peer to leader is without doubt one of the hardest things I have done in my professional career. Getting this nod from my team that I have done a good job is very important to me.

The drinks will be on me for a while…