What He Learned on the Actor’s Stage

Chris Murphy Ives

VICE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL,

EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA & CANADA

FOR HP

By any account, Chris Murphy Ives, the vice president and deputy general counsel for HP, is a successful lawyer. There’s a chance he could have been an equally successful actor.

“I figured the two professions are pretty similar in a number of ways,” he explains. “So, I thought I’d try the lawyer gig first and then see how it goes…I would always have the possibility to go back to the acting.”

Murphy Ives was in the cadet commander of the same platoon as Kiefer Sutherland during their time at St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Ontario, Canada. When Murphy Ives was in school musicals, Sutherland would watch him from the back of the auditorium during rehearsals.

During his time at St. Andrew’s College and McGill University in Montreal, Murphy Ives usually played characters who provided the comic relief. Having a sense of humor still serves him well; today he uses it to defuse tense situations in business or in legal negotiations to project a positive atmosphere and move discussions forward.

Perhaps the only characteristic that defines Murphy Ives more than a buoyant sense of humor is an intrinsic curiosity about the world. Raised entirely in Canada by his British father, who taught at St. Andrew’s College (but not while his son was enrolled), and his Canadian/British mother, who lived much of her formative years in the United Kingdom and taught art. Murphy Ives realized, from an early age, that his perspective on life was different than those around him. “When I was a young, I had an English accent and used British vernacular – both of which I got from my parents. That opened me up to jokes once I hit school. Though I soon dropped the accent, I realized that having a different perspective was useful. In the same way, I still find it interesting to learn more about different cultures, and in a way, try to adopt some of the best things from all of them.”

His first experience of living abroad was during his junior year at McGill University. He elected to study in Jerusalem – a religious capital to Jews, Muslims and Christians. As a Catholic, Murphy Ives was fascinated. There were Palestinian as well as Israeli students in his residence. He was one of the few non-Jewish people in his program for overseas students. He was intrigued by the diversity of cultures that he found in Jerusalem, and he learned a lot about the world from that experience.

When he returned to Montreal, Murphy Ives continued to hone his acting skills in the McGill Players, the university’s musical troupe, with leading roles in critically acclaimed musicals. Although he credits his acting skills to his ability to work with a group of diverse people, drawing on the best they have to offer, to achieve often outstanding results, by the time he graduated, he had another career in mind. He knew he wanted to practice law on an international level.

He moved to the west coast of Canada to earn his bachelor of law degree from the University of British Columbia, where, in addition to the standard first year courses, he studied Chinese, Japanese, civil, public and private international law. For a semester, he studied at the Universities of Warsaw, Poland and Moscow, Russia, which, in 1987, was the capital of the USSR. Reflecting on his legal studies, Murphy Ives says he wished more law school courses focused on the interplay of different legal systems to prepare students for international careers.

After qualifying as a lawyer in Toronto, he relocated to Geneva where he received his Diplôme d’études supérieures in international commercial law from the Institute of International Studies at the University of Geneva. While in Switzerland he also met his wife, a Cambridge-educated Canadian national who has worked for the Canadian Embassy, the United Nations and various non-governmental organizations, like the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue.

Together they moved to Paris, where Murphy Ives trained in civil law and qualified as a French lawyer. He handled international mergers and acquisitions as an associate at Bignon Lebray. Despite enjoying his time there, he always knew he wanted to be in-house. “Being in-house means you’re part of a team that’s actually building something or creating a product or providing a service. As part of that team, the success of the project is partly your success. Team experience has always attracted me. In my earlier days, I was the captain of the horseback riding team and I always liked motivating a group of people towards a common goal.”

Murphy Ives’ first in-house job was for Eridania Béghin-Say, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, outside Paris, which he joined in 1995. The agrofood company, under the umbrella of Italy-based Montedison Group, was, among other things, the biggest olive oil company in the world. He got hands-on experience doing M&A deals around the world and exposure to various legal systems. He loved the job, but around the same time his wife was expecting their first child, and they decided they wanted to move to a smaller city.

Ottawa was on the table, and the place they met: Geneva. Murphy Ives subscribed to the Geneva paper, in the year 2000, and poured over job postings for lawyers. He is probably one of the last lawyers hired by HP through a newspaper advertisement.

At HP, he led numerous public and private M&A transactions throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the United States and Asia. As he became more experienced, the opportunities grew. He was the lead legal integration manager for the Compaq merger in Europe. In 2009 he was promoted to vice president, Asia Pacific and Japan, deputy general counsel. He moved to Singapore, along with his wife and, by this time, four children.

Asia has a wide variety of approaches to the law, and different roles for lawyers, Murphy Ives says. There are countries like China, where antitrust laws are only a few years old. Some, like Australia and New Zealand, have legal systems that are very similar to those in Europe and North America. Others, like India, rely on a legal system largely implemented by the British in the 1920s and have not been significantly modified since. In fact, Murphy Ives was responsible along with the local team for creating a precedent in Indian law by leading a squeeze out of minority shareholders from HP Global Soft Ltd., a formerly Indian public company, where his team ensured the minority shareholders were treated fairly. HP’s innovative approach stood up to judicial scrutiny and the case sets precedence for others. The experience prepared him to tackle Asia, where industry practice is often almost as important as the way laws are implemented.

HP rarely uses outside counsel. “The in-house team has a better knowledge of the businesses, of the strategy of the company itself,” Murphy Ives says. A lot of his work focuses on streamlining processes. He looks for transactions that have a high volume and are repeatable. If the process is correct, then HP is able to handle more transactions more effectively in a consistent manner.

While in Singapore, Murphy Ives felt there was a dearth of professional associations geared toward in-house lawyers for multinational corporations. Along with others, he decided to found ACC’s Singapore Chapter. The exchange of ideas, from best practices for lawyers in Singapore and the Asian region, to the simple social perspective, helped him navigate the new region.

In 2012, Murphy Ives moved back to Switzerland, with another new title : vice president, Europe Middle East & Africa (EMEA) and Latin American & Canada (LAC), deputy general counsel. He is able to continue his upward trajectory by imagining what his clients are looking for: “Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. You’re trying to understand the support needs that they have from legal.”

Murphy Ives is concentrating on two major projects right now. HP, with its 317,000 employees, is splitting into two companies and he needs to figure out how to divide up and replicate the current corporate structure. Along the way, his team needs to incorporate new companies country by country. Asset transfers, demergers, real estate analysis and other processes are all part of the equation. In the end, the goal is to have two world class companies with two world class legal departments.

His other major goal is to keep his legal department motivated and to mentor younger lawyers. It took Murphy Ives about six months to a year to truly integrate himself into HP. “Once you’ve mastered one area of practice at HP, then I think from that moment on, you’re able to start sharing your experiences with others so they can build on what you’ve done to make things better. The thing that’s great about mentorship is that it’s a two-way street. The mentor learns along with the mentee.”

Murphy Ives has always been interested in learning about the world and sharing that knowledge with others. With his zeal for world cultures, languages and business, he is a perfect lawyer for these times.