Event Report

Our event, which was our first in Brussels, started with a delicious lunch and coffee providing an opportune networking session which led us to the substantive content of the day.

The first panel, hosted by Debevoise & Plimpton, was a stimulating discussion regarding the organisation and preparation of cross border internal investigations. It was expertly moderated by Dr Thomas Schürrle, managing partner Frankfurt, from Debevoise & Plimpton and included Dr Friedrich Popp, partner, Debevoise & Plimpton, Thibaut Grégoire, general counsel Europe, Mastercard and Fatma Keskin, general counsel, Zetes Industries. Their conversation centred around the planning and conducting the investigation including defining the make-up of the investigatory team, responsibilities to competing authorities – particularly in a cross border context – and crisis management. The conversation then turned to investigation compliance and the complexity of reporting requirements. Fatma and Thibaut provided excellent examples and insights from their experience as well as a solid grounding of the topic’s relevant and broader context for general counsel’s faced with this task.

Our second panel, hosted by Hunton Andrews Kurth, focused on data breaches and the management of those crisis situations. The talk centred around practical steps companies can take to prevent data breaches – to the extent of which that is possible – and the prevalence of human error in cases of data breaches. David Dumont, partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth led the discussion and was joined by Terese Basile EMEA privacy director and legal counsel of Estée Lauder Companies, and Hartmut Nedebock, head, data privacy at GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines. The panellists stressed the importance of documentation throughout the process and staff training in the spotting, reacting and prevention of data incidents. The panel finished with questions from the audience and a discussion of the consequences of data breaches on a company’s reputation, as well as legal and financial repercussions.

The third panel was led by Loyens & Loeff, and moderated by partners Grégoire Jakhian and Robrecht Coppens who divided the session in halves. The first half centred on governance under the new Belgian code for companies and featured the expertise of Liesbeth Demuynck, corporate affairs director – head legal BeLux from ISS. This topic was highly relevant to the Belgian in-house market as it addressed challenges that all companies in Belgium will need to focus on in the next year. The second half of the panel led by Gregoire was focused on corporate governance realities and trends within the financial sector including ESG regulation and initiatives and featured the insight of Maarten Cleppe, manager legal bank at AXA.The panel concluded with a discussion around questions posed by the audience.

Finally, our last panel was hosted by Claeys & Engels and led by Inger Verhelst, partner, and included the expertise of Jean Baptiste Chavialle, legal director, employment, EMEA at Uber and the perspectives of Boris Muniz, Capstan Avocats and Benjamin Vaandrager from Bronsgeest Deur, senior associates from French and Dutch affiliated firms who are employment specialists. The panel covered the emerging topic of platform employee rights and employer liabilities. The discussion centred around the classification of employment contracts and its applicability or not to the case of the platform worker. Further discussion focused on the attempts by governments and judiciaries to provide guidance on this issue, with confusing and often contradictory results. The panel finished with a description of Uber’s stance on these issues and the perspective and expertise of Jean Baptiste, which was lively and enlightening, and followed with questions from the audience in an excellent way to finish the content of the event.

We then adjourned for drinks and canapes which provided everyone an opportunity to continue discussions already started and to meet new faces within the in-house legal industry in Brussels and across Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. I would like to thank our sponsors Debevoise & Plimpton, Huntons Andrews Kurth, Loyens & Loeff and Claeys & Engels for their support, without which this event would not have been possible. Keep an eye out for more events in Brussels coming up and the publication of the GC Powerlist Benelux Teams which is on its way soon.

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