About

After several in-house roles with household brands across different industries, including Pirelli and Barilla, Giacomo Leo spent seven years as the general counsel of Poltrona Frau, a leading company in luxury furniture, before joining Bottega Veneta in June 2015. With a team of professionals local to locations across South East Asia, the UK and the US, Leo’s role is truly an international one requiring great flexibility and diversity to manage relationships among the different stakeholders. Upon Leo’s arrival at Poltrono Frau he had responsibility for creating the legal department from scratch, as there was ‘not even a group legal direction’, meaning Leo had to help design and implement all the procedures, standards and rules to govern the group. In his current role, and in line with recent changes at management level, Leo is currently involved in combating lots of new challenges at Bottega Veneta, the Italian luxury goods house. Although this time there was a fully functioning legal department in the company when he joined, which was ‘in good shape’, there were still improvements to be made. Leo is in the process of creating a new team and structuring relationships with new employees as well as creating a new ‘internal culture’ in terms of legal and IP. Citing a ‘very good’ relationship with senior management inclusive of a direct reporting line to the CEO, Leo’s team are involved in all strategic decisions of the company. Leo states that the perception of value added is ‘not clearly measurable’ but he is confident that the team’s effort has a ‘big impact’ and that ‘communication’ is an important part of this.